Gordon's Pick
The Song of Myself
"What is truth?" Pilate
asked Jesus. And Jesus answered him not.
One of the poems in Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" is called, "Song of Myself." That poem caught my attention the first time I read it, and I have contemplated its meaning many times since. Singing the song of yourself has a thrilling and dangerous appeal, like skinny-dipping or hitchhiking across the country with only twenty bucks in your pocket.
Many times I have wanted to sing the song of myself, but I’ve never been willing to take the time or pay the price.
What would it take to sing the song of yourself? What would it cost you?
First, you would have to know yourself. And that is quite a thing to consider. You would have to take a long, careful look into what is deep and hidden within you. What is lurking around the corners of your mind? What memories and obsessions haunt you? What causes your glands to seize? What gets your blood moving so that your veins and arteries swell and push to the surface of your skin? What comes from your gut? What do your instincts say? Who or what speaks to you at night when the raw cuts of your home movies are shown on the screen of your mind?
Knowing yourself takes a long time, but even if you take that journey and arrive knowing yourself as well as a person can, you still might not sing the song of yourself. What would stop you?
Cowardly fears and righteous obligations.
Because…
Singing the song of yourself means telling the truth, and the truth has a way of severing ties to people and places and things. The words are spoken and a gleaming scalpel flashes. Living cords are sliced away. There are howls of pain and then silence.
Because…
Savage Joy
About a decade ago I glanced into my middle daughter’s room and found her sitting on her knees, looking out the window with her favorite toys lined up on the windowsill. They were all there: Her blanket - which had a personality and a loose seam for a mouth, various plush animals, a number of Disney characters, a group of small horses, and an assortment of other figures. She had turned her little friends toward the glass as if they were all looking out into the front yard together. She was talking with them, perhaps drawing their attention to something in the yard, or maybe holding court on any number of intimate subjects.
I immediately froze and did not make a sound. This was my second child, so I was an experienced enough parent to know a precious and unrepeatable thing when I saw it. I leaned against the door frame, then let my body slide slowly down the frame until I was on my knees.
She talked to her toys, jabbering about one thing and then another. She moralized, corrected, parented, acted out parts. She was lost in the Kingdom of Shelby, a place made up of bits and pieces of her life tossed about in her mind and dreams. Her kingdom was not governed by rules or laws or physics. The glue holding Shelby’s kingdom together was her own frail and developing view of the world. It was an infantile worldview without borders or categories, at least none that you or I would recognize.
I say “was” because Shelby is now a teen-ager, so she has been banished from the Kingdom of Shelby except at night when all the old things return from the deep waters and shadowed forests of dreaming.
All children have their own play world, and they are able to lose themselves in it. The state of play exists before consciousness. It is an indescribable and intensely personal thing for a child to be deep in play. And if they find they are being watched, they will come back from that world and become shy or start performing. Either way, the magic is lost.
My House
The exterior of my house is very pleasing to the eye. It’s a modest, prairie home that is aging well and is comforting to look at. The porch is large, with chairs and a couple of swings. On the porch I am the perfect host - chatting, making people feel welcome, and carrying drinks around on a little tray. I’m very engaged in the conversations, actively listening, and moving smoothly from one group to the next.
People like the outside of my house and the front porch. I take great pride in that.
But I don’t invite many people inside my house. I need to know you pretty well before I let you see the interior, though I do have a variety of photo albums available on the porch. These photos are a carefully chosen selection from the various rooms inside my house. I’ve included a few safe, but slightly intimate photos of my private rooms, so that you’ll almost think you’ve been inside.
“Wow, these are great photos,” someone on the porch says. “So intimate and beautiful and daring.”
“Thank you,” I say with a big smile. “More lemonade?”
The people I allow inside are surprised to find that the interior looks nothing like what you’d expect in a prairie home. Through the front door is a large, open room that looks like a warehouse. Mounds of papers, books, and dirty plates cover the tops of tables and desks. Even some of the chairs have things stacked on them. Here and there are half-finished projects, some buried under piles of financial statements, unused calendars, and receipts. There is sawdust and trash all over the floor. Everywhere you look there are chewed pencils.
In the warehouse I rush back and forth in a mad panic, slapping things together, scribbling on papers, and stuffing things into envelopes. A phone is cradled on my shoulder, and I am shouting apologies into it. These apologies are as messy as the room, stitched together with lies and half-truths.
Soft True Strong & You
Children are so soft. Their skin is fragrant and pure, like baby leaves. Their minds are eager and ready, their hearts are trusting and open, and their eyes will lead you softly to the very bottom of their souls.
Children know God because God can be found in the soft places of the world. In mother’s hands and in father’s soft shirts. In laughter and at dinner and in the goose bumps that rise when lips slide across skin.
It is a terrible thing when soft, childish flesh meets the hard steel of religion. We cut through children like butter. In our collective unconscious there is a swishing sound. It is the sound of the swords of Herod’s men rising and falling on the children of Bethlehem.
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.
Take a deep breath now, and free your mind. Do you remember when your spiritual softness was taken from you?
Did it happen at church?
What sort of church was it? Was it a brick building in the suburbs? Was it a synagogue or a mosque or a cathedral? Was it the secret church of one man’s desire, or the feral church of neglected children? Was it the cold sanctuary of science that stole your myths and left you wounded and empty and suckling at the stars? Or did you construct your own lonely chapel, like Saint Frances, barefoot and one stone at a time?
I was wounded along the way. It happens to everyone. Life is hazing. It’s one big rite of passage from beginning to end. I grew tough as leather, deeply protected, calloused, and hard. But I worked my leather with the oil of my hands and with tears and time until I became soft again. And soft, worn leather is such a comfort to have and to hold.
Now I guard children’s hearts against all religions, sacred and secular. I will throw myself at you, church man. Stay away from that child’s mind. Let her be a pagan; let her be a skeptic, a scientist, or a saint. Let her be any or all of these, but for God’s sake, let her be.
A Religion of Denial
Back in the early 90s, a man named John was a member of our church. He was a professional man, with a wife and two sons. Sam was in high school, and Teddy was in middle school. Both boys played football. His wife Allison was beautiful and very involved with a number of local civic organizations. This was the life they had imagined. Things were working out just as they had planned.
And then a doctor told John that he had a large, inoperable tumor in his abdomen. Chemotherapy and radiation were options, but the doctor was not overly optimistic.
We who were his church were shocked and saddened. We prayed with John and Allison, hoping that the treatments would work and that God would grant them some kind of miracle. But as time went by, it became clear that the treatments were not working. The tumor did not decrease in size.
The people of our church are committed to prayer. Prayer is a sacred part of our spiritual tradition, and it is an important part of our covenant with each other. Even when do not understand what is happening, we give ourselves to the discipline of prayer. We put the best we have into it.
We are also aware that most of the time God allows things to take their natural course. When last I checked, the death rate was holding steady at 100%. So no matter how many miracles you name and claim, at some point your prayers for healing will be answered with a no.
Moon Colors
the night was bending and turning and lonely
we were tossed in our sheets by our dreams
i heard a train in the distance
pleading like a ship seeking safe passage
something is wrong and lonely between us
but the lonely wrongness is going away
because you turned and bent and reached
and so did i
we were sleepy and there were only shades of grey
and our fan, ever faithful
keeping watch over us by night
we sought each other tearfully, finally
you were my pillow and I was your boy
i was your comfort and you were my only one
maybe the night was an opening thing
opening us because we were barely awake
and our guards were down
and nothing casts out fear like sleepy love
it is like a rampart of pressed earth
thrown up before the ages
and beaten by desperate hands
it is like a bulwark of moon colors and faith
rising up in the dead of night
to take on all comers
rlp
For J9, only mine
The Loneliest Of The Lonely Things
There is no kind of loneliness more lonely than when no one in the world knows who you are. When there is no one waiting to see what a tender and fragile thing you could take out of your chest, like someone taking a hamster out of a cage. There is no one there, but you know exactly what it would be like.
Your elbows and forearms are pressed against your ribs and you hold the hamster beneath your chin. You are holding it as tightly as you can without hurting it. The hamster is squirming and wanting to go back to the safety of the cage, but you are going to show it to your best friend and she is waiting, trembling and excited, her hands cupped just as yours are cupped.
The moment of transfer is awkward. She squeals and you both laugh. The hamster struggles wildly and almost gets away, but she makes a desperate grab at the last moment and then it is in her hands, shivering and afraid and completely exposed.
Your heart pounds in your chest, and it is hard to swallow because she has your hamster now. But it looks like it is going to be okay. She is petting it and whispering little baby words to it. And it is calming down and peeking out from between her fingers.
You know the truth of this. You can feel it down in the part of you that no one can take away. You KNOW this is how it would be. But there is no one there for you right now, and you can't think of any reason to take your hamster out of its cage at all.
rlp
I Gave Myself Away
I’m alone this morning, and I’m wondering some things.
The roles I play in the world are strong, powerful, and demanding. They require much of me. Perhaps all of me. If these roles were gone, what would be left?
What if I wasn’t Real Live Preacher? What if I wasn’t that guy who writes good and has that blog that everyone reads? If I wasn’t driven to produce, what would become of my soul? Would my mind remain without form and void and with darkness upon the face of my deep? If I hadn’t spoken Real Live Preacher into existence, what of Gordon Atkinson?
What if I wasn’t the pastor of Covenant Baptist Church? What if I never had to proclaim truth, be an example to the flock, or set my own needs aside for duty’s sake? What would be left of my Christianity, I wonder? What would happen to me without such a powerful motivation? Are fear and obligation the only things keeping my faith frosty?
What if I wasn’t father to the three sisters? What if there were no hands buried wrist-deep in my torso, clinging to my heart, seeking anything with purchase, squeezing my ribs like the bars of a cage?
“Please don’t leave us, daddy.”
And finally, what if I was not husband to Jeanene? What if I was alone? What if there was no other person whose vision and body and life I shared? What if there was no warm and soft woman to whom I did cleave and become one flesh?
Imagine if all of these things were gone and you were to stand before the shell of my body. My creativity undifferentiated, formless and weak. My neck calcified and my head forever unbowed. My breast ripped open and the little hands gone. My legs pulled up to my chest with my arms hugging them in loneliness. What if you were to stand before that body and call me forth as a demon is called, resentful and struggling, out of the darkness?
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