listen to the music

i could be the most virtuosic guitar player in the world, but if i couldn't listen, i'd hardly be a musician. i'm a very modest guitar player; most people i play with are much more talented, and that includes my students. but i know that because i listen, i'm a capable musician. i try to listen with all my being, because the music is always happening, and always happening at all levels in all ways. listen to the drums, listen to the bass, listen to the guitar and keys, listen to the singers, listen to the sound tech, listen to the audience, listen to the groove, listen to the mood, listen to what's going on inside me, listen to my intuition, listen to my muse, listen to the people, listen to the walls and halls and bricks and beams, listen to the birds and traffic, listen to the rain and listen to the sunshine, listen to the colours and the smells. listen to my children and family, my friends, my enemies. listen to you. listen to me. listen to god. listen, we are all musicians. i know of no greater joy.

communion

ok, next in the continuing adventure of discovering protestantism (as opposed to anglicanism, even low-church anglicanism), is... communion! there are many formal and liturgical differences (which i won't list here).

but the essence remains, and that greatly moved me. i at times had tears in the corners of my eyes, as i felt i haven't felt in perhaps a quarter century.

notes: i did locate the baptismal font, today, in behind the drum kit. the music was really good today, and i wondered: if i joined them and they would have me, would i (have to) wear a goatee ;) ?

the new testament exegesis (? -- as i've said before, it's not really a sermon) tells me how little i've read and understood the epistles. we came to the famous section where paul says that wives should obey their husbands, and i thought to myself, now, how's jim gonna handle this? with humour, first of all ("i wanted this in our wedding vows, but melissa wouldn't go for it"); and then with context ("women were property"); and finally with revelation ("it was a radical idea that husbands should love their wives as their own bodies"). jim's modern take on impure love is love that objectifies the other.

here are today's two synchronicities. when i got home i put on some music for my brunch guests. i chose a mix tape i had made a few years before. the mix tape itself had no theme when it was made; it was just the songs we were listening to that summer. these two songs were back-to-back on the tape; in the first song, hawksley workman expresses how i felt during communion, and in the second, sarah harmer sings of consecrated love.

Sweet Hallelujah
by Hawksley Workman
from For Him and the Girls

This is just a prayer for those who need one
There's a little church I know in the dale
Where they sing a song so sweet, to my saviour who is calling me
Sweet, sweet, I just have to breathe hallelujah, sweet hallelujah.

I'll meet you before the dew has left the fern leaves
We'll listen together as the bell rings from the dale
and it summons me with a sound so sweet, like my saviour who is calling me
Sweet, sweet, I just have to sing hallelujah, sweet hallelujah

And there is none so fine a place to greet him
To dance before the morning sun is to please him
To dance a dance so gracefully, to praise the man so clumsily
Sweet, sweet, I just have to dance hallelujah, sweet hallelujah


Open Window
by Sarah Harmer
from You Were Here

Love, I see you there
Adrift on the air
Floating by the open window

Ah, the sentiment of love
Reflections that speak of
What can enter when our hearts are open

Here, witnesses appear
And recognize how sacred love can be when stated
Shared, shown for all to see
The beauty that can be when love is cultivated

Well our love is a sacred thing
Like the mysteries of the night
In the darkness unwavering
And still so strong come the light

Well our love is an infinite thing
Like the sun's last ray on the sea
As it sets low in the west
And the moon rises

terar dum prosim

i read tonight's open journal before doing the dishes, so that i'd have something to contemplate while doing the dishes, but that was hours ago and i can't recall all that i wanted to write about.

i've been in a few car accidents. i was the driver in every one of them. sober every time. only one of them involved a collision with another vehicle. no one's ever been hurt, including me. but there have been some close calls. after the last one, about 20 months ago, i gave up driving.

the two most amazing ones involved ice and rear-drive vehicles. in the first one, north of lake superior, i rolled a jeep down an embankment. it landed on its wheels. after i checked for fluid leaks, i put the jeep into 4-wheel drive, drove it up the snowy embankment, and back to the opp station in whiteriver.

the other amazing one was on the 400 southbound going through barrie approaching the anne street overpass. the car fishtailed and shot off the road. the last thing i saw before the snow flew over the windshield was the telephone pole coming straight for me. i remember calmly saying, "Oh well." the car somehow missed the telephone pole, slid up the side of the overpass embankment, then slid backdown and came to rest against the inside of the guardrail. the width of the gap between the telephone pole and the guard rail at that time through which the car had shot was only a few metres, maybe 3 or 4.

i've been lucky so many times. and those are the accidents or near misses that are obvious to me. what about the ones i don't know about, the ones where had i done something a moment sooner or a moment later... ?

dumb luck? first of all, i think somebody's been trying to tell me something: "you shouldn't be driving." but maybe somebody's also saying, "not so fast. i'm not done with you yet." maybe, because i keep asking what i should be doing in this universe, to best serve it, somebody's saying, "you haven't got the answer yet." i don't know. i don't presume to know how god works. i wouldn't know a miracle if it hit me in the face.

about a year ago, my cousin-in-law suddenly ended up in hospital in hamilton, with leukemia. all her platelets, her white blood cells, everything was gone. she was given 24 hours left to live. she stayed like that for weeks. there were vigils, there were intercessions. i didn't pray, but i wrote her a poem. in an email last week, her husband, my first cousin, wrote very humourously of how last week they spent her 44th birthday going to 6 or 7 medical exams, how she's almost fully recovered and will be off meds in the next month or two. at the hospital they call her the miracle girl. she set some kind of record for being so close to death's door for so long.

a jungian analyst once told me that all the people i dream about are not those people, but facets of me, and what do i see of myself in those facets? a friend and counselor once told me that my son, who has aspergers syndrome, is there to serve a purpose in my life. by extension, i wonder, does everybody serve a purpose in my life; does everybody serve my purpose? and the corollary: do i serve a purpose in everybody else's life? do we all serve each other, in one way or another, whether we like it or not? ("it's not an option.")

my high school motto is: terar dum prosim, which means: may i be consumed in service. the school is named after bishop nicholas ridley, who was burned at the stake in tudor england (that's him being burned at the beginning of the film Elizabeth).

proofs of god

i don't like them. i encountered a lot of them in my university studies. a logical proof requires a priori assumptions, but what comes before god? a proof strikes me as a human creation, a human fabrication; a proof of god seems to put the cart before the horse.

actually, proof seems out of place to me tonight. i was watching pairs of canada geese courting on the ice of the bay, honking calls and response, flying fast and low. geese are what geese are.

i am what i am. god is what is god, and i still prefer god as ineffable. i like the mystery and wonder, i like the challenge to my faith: how do i believe in what i don't know? jesus the human i know, as much as i can know a historical/archetypal/mythopoetic person.

god as proof. i don't like this either. i've been reading about intelligent design lately, not in my current book i'm reading, programming the universe, but as an adjunct. science is science, and while god may be at the root of all creation, the prime mover, or even active agent, scientific methodology has several criteria of proof, none of which admits the supernatural. science does not prove everything; just the opposite, it discovers more and more mystery, more and more wonder.

i sit watching the geese, and i nag myself: shouldn't i be doing something else? something productive? something that moves my life forward another notch? (as if i could possibly control my future to such fine detail, or to any degree at all). then
i scold myself: shut up! i'm missing the geese!

facts and proofs and plans, if they get out of hand, can get in the way of wonder, eh?

i heard a james taylor song today that i've never paid attention to before. here are some of the words from the middle of the song "Secret O' Life":


The secret of love is in opening up your heart
It's okay to feel afraid
But don't let that stand in your way
'Cause anyone knows that love is the only road
And since we're only here for a while
Might as well show some style
Give us a smile

Einstein said he could never understand it all
Planets spinning through space
The smile upon your face
Welcome to the human race

Isn't it a lovely ride
Sliding down
Gliding down
Try not to try too hard
It's just a lovely ride

so many paths to god

in buddhism, a bodhisattva is an enlightened one who chooses not to go to nirvana but to stay on earth and help all other sentient beings achieve enlightenment.

when all achieve enlightenment, as i understand it, then karma, the cycle of birth-and-death, will end, and suffering shall cease.

i particularly like the little i know of the mayahana buddhist tradition.

on sunday, in church, i heard a similar call like that: once you find the light in the person of jesus, help others toward the light.

as i leaned away from christianity in my 20s, i leaned towards taoism and buddhism. intellectually, that is. i've never been to a taoist or buddhist temple, never sat meditation.

there's a buddhist retreat centre not far from barrie, and at least three of my friends in midland have gone for 10-day retreats and have had marvelous, wondrous, challenging, soul-satisfying experiences.

so many paths to god, and yet they seem to be similar in many ways.

i'm not tempted to do a buddhist retreat; i don't feel it in me to be a buddhist. my culture, my upbringing, the myths deep inside of me, everything has a christian expression. it feels to be the most honest and integral part of me.

and it's not in my community -- this might be a different story if there were a buddhist or taoist centre here which may have drawn a different part of me out and nurtured it in a community, who knows?

reformation, metanoia, easter is a heady time. heady, hearty, soulful.

passion

when using the word 'passion' i've always kept in mind it's root meaning, to suffer:

"Middle English, from Old French, from Medieval Latin passi, passin-, sufferings of Jesus or a martyr, from Late Latin, physical suffering, martyrdom, sinful desire, from Latin, an undergoing, from passus, past participle of pat, to suffer;"
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=passion

(near?) conversion experience

i mentioned some time ago in some blog somewhere that i was keeping a private list of recent synchronities. i've also written more than once that i feel parts of my life coming full circle (which is a remarkably more satisfying feeling than my life going around in circles!).

here are some expanded notes from last night's entry into my synchronicities list (which was actually around 3 a.m. today -- which is now yesterday as it is now just past midnight).

* a few days ago, i was emailing with a friend about being alone, and i wrote that though i generally like being by myself, "it's not preferable. it doesn't feel wholesome. i feel incomplete.i am my self, but i am also a social being."

* yesterday at cottage books i found and bought The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light, by tom harpur, which promises to strip away the foofaraw from the historical jesus.

* yesterday, i started reading Programming the Universe: a quantum computer scientist takes on the cosmos, by seth lloyd.

* tonight, i had a half-written reply about "meaning" to jim kitson's post "Christ in One Another." i stopped writing because i was tired and my thoughts were foggy. then i closed the notepad without saving. yoiks! two things jim had written really caught my attention: "It is in the setting of human fellowship that we grow in him and toward him and become more like him" and "You can’t depend on any one person to show Jesus to you or for you to know him."

* i read KU's brilliant posts and went to bed, and read programming the universe until my eyes closed. (since then i've also read the kevin's powerful and personal post on prayer.)

* but i couldn't sleep. i was thinking that kevin and kate are moving with certainty into fellowship at church, and kate is diving in deep, while i drift out to sea; kate and kevin have a greater certainty about christ. and why is that? and thinking about the why kept me awake.

* i should add that i have this mental image in my mind of the the-life-and-times-of-our-universe-as-dixie-cup (replacing my earlier one of the-life-and-times-of-our-universe-as-balloon), because my current computer wallpaper at work is an artist's representation of the expansion of the universe over time from the beginning:

this image came from a NASA article: "Ringside Seat to the Universe's First Split Second"
(someone called this a "kiddush cup" but i don't know what that is, i'm too lazy to google it, i can't relate to it, and so it has no meaning to me; but i can relate to a dixie cup.)

(two quotes come to mind: "Me and all these other dice bouncing around in the cup" and "God does not play dice with the universe.".)

so, let's recap:
* i'm alone in this universe
* the universe is big; it has a design, and a structure; it's a big computer that computes information
* i came from the universe, i will return to it, and am part of it, but how do i relate to the universe?
* why can't i relate to jesus?

* i feel something's trying tell me something; i don't feel i've drifted so far out to sea, i feel close to belief in god and jesus. for jesus to have meaning for me, the jesus i can relate to, is the jesus stripped away of all foofaraw, like the anglican altar stripped bare on maundy thursday. god as the design/er of the dixie-cup universe, the computer, and the design is trying to tell me something, there is intention in the design, something is trying to be said. jesus as the interpreter who gives meaning by making relationships possible. relating, direct contact. humane laying on of hands, healing

* so i got up, made myself a mashed-banana-on-rye sandwich, and climbed back into bed with programming the universe.

From page 25 (emphasis mine): "1001001 1101110 0100000 1110100 1101000 1100101 0100000 1100010 1100101 1100111 1101001 1101110 1101110 1101001 1101110 1100111. Interpreted as a message encoded in ASCII, this string means "In the beginning." But taken on its own, with no specification of how it is to be interpreted, it means nothing other than itself. Meaning is defined only relative to a scheme of interpretation, as the following conversation between Alice and Humpty Dumpty reveals [the author quotes this page in Alice in Wonderland from 'I don't know what you mean' to 'which is to be master — that's all.']"

at this point, i got up and keyed these notes into my list of synchronicities, now much expanded.

to be continued...

boss and balancing

i sat in my boss's office today during a regular one-on-one meeting. he and i understand each other very well; we have the same DiSC personality (Appraiser pattern). our talks can be quite open and frank. my little company cares about people, and it comes from the heart; it comes from people such as my boss.

so we discussed the people and the plans for the next 6 months or so, and he asked how i'm feeling about things, are things going alright? he knows that in the past year or so i've struggled with many balancing acts at work. i nod my head and smile and say, "things are good." which is the truth. he presses me. i hesitate. do i let him know my head is swimming? that i'm thinking of life, the universe, and everything? does it show?

programming takes such focus, to do it well. and to build a major application, there's time away from the keyboard when you need to go over things in your head, while you do the dishes or walk to the grocery store.

but now i'd rather be thinking of other things. things i was thinking of 25 years ago when i started out as an adult, but think of them now with middle aged experience.

for the past year or nearly a year, i've felt more and more strongly that i don't want to program computers or manage computer people in business for another 15 years. i have a good job, i enjoy it, it pays well, it will help me get my kids through university or wherever it is they're bound (i hope).

but it's not my true purpose, my profession, what i profess. i can feel that. what is my true purpose, what do i profess? i don't know. that's what i'd rather be thinking about.

does it show? does my boss need to know? no.

not yet.

the first swimming lesson

i am familiar with the anglican and roman catholic churches. this is my first time at a presbyterian service. naturally, the first part of the service i felt different, unsettled: where are the altar and communion rail? where are the pulpit and baptismal font? where is the liturgy? where are the kneelers in the pews? where is the priest in his or her collar and vestments?

my musician's eyes scan the instruments on stage: a KORG keyboard in the centre (where the altar might've been, depending if this were a high church or a low church) (btw: partway through the service i realize that KORG is the palindrome of GROK); a fendor precision bass and traynor amp, an acoustic 6-string, and a pearl drumset (which no one played; the rhythm tracks came from the keyboard, i assume). there are 6 mics on stage.

here is the pastor in an avocado green dress shirt, top button buttoned up but no tie, black dress pants. as he walked past me down the aisle, i notice his belt missed one of the belt loops, something i could easily have done myself had i worn a belt this morning.

i am familiar with alternative services and contemporary christian music, so i wasn't surprised by the uptempo songs of worship; nevertheless, the music didn't reach me, so i stood patiently by while many sang, some clapped, and someone nearby heavily tapped foot on floor.

i sat in pew 51 with kevin to my right and the aisle to my left. the first part of the service was simple enough: a prayer, a few songs and some announcements, a slide show of the children's art from last week. then, if i remember correctly, the kids left for sunday school and the sermon began.

except it wasn't a sermon. it didn't have the quality of a well-prepared, well-rehearsed theological disputation. i'm sure it was well-prepared, but it didn't feel "prepared." there were overheads, but it wasn't a lecture either. it was jim kitson — who's been to my house to bring his son to guitar lessons — modestly, earnestly, conversationally answering one of the most important questions that has bugged me for more than 25 years: is jesus the one?

it took him a while to get around to it. at one point i thought he wasn't going to answer the question afterall. but i suspect that's part of his conversational style not to be didactic; also, as kate pointed out, he perhaps has to be very careful not to offend or shock those in the congregation who firmly believe jesus is the one (as in the one and only); he took pains to start from scripture: the gospels and the letters of paul, and especially the gospel of john with the platonic idea of jesus as "o` logos" — the universal and eternal word. jim remarked on the holy people of the old testament and people of other cultures, and emphasized that god wants to include all people. so, in the broadest sense, yes, jesus as the light, as the word, is the way, for all people, always was, always will be. i can live with that.

but what's the point, of jesus on the cross? what's the point of a personal god? this is the second great question for me, and it is like the first. i believe in a historical jesus, but i don't know about a jesus fully man and fully god, which, as jim said, doesn't make logical sense. at this moment in his talk, i had a small insight.

it was a flash, and now, ten hours later, i'm trying trace all that which that flash illumined. it has something to do with suffering and passion. with jesus as a portal, a connection, a completeness to the universal. the universal is all fine and dandy; the grand scheme of things is a nice perspective, but it's not a complete picture. it's lacking vitality, life. it's all reason with no rhyme; all physics with no feeling; all logic with no art; all sublime with no passion. it's a universe of stardust and gases and dark matter, but no life, nothing human, nothing dolphin, nothing earthworm nor microbial, nothing alien. all things rise and fall and suffer, suffer death, decay. it is the way of the universe. and if the universe could speak...

if the universe could speak. it speaks all time time. every moment of the universe is information (seth lloyd programming the universe).

if the universe could speak. what might it say? i am the universe, i am the way, the tao, the light, this photon of information, this word, this truth, this love, this yearning, this dance. all who believe in me shall be saved.

okay. i'm definitely diving off the deep end now. i guess it's where i've always preferred swimming. don't like to hit my head on the bottom.

the plowmen

as the scotsman and adrian know,
our town is bequeathed with snow

soon the midnight tim's will be
convergent with plowmen's trucks
rumbly diesel warming while
the plowmen order their triple-triple fuel
for the all-night runs

and kids scoot down campbell's hill
ruddy cheeked and fingertips frozen
sweaty bodies steaming from the neck
parents happy for the sound sleep that
winter play brings

lo velo ve love - haiku

love? lo velo ve love
lov el ovel o velo
vel ove love

eh you annoya

far hans arp
fer hens erp
fir hins irp
for hons orp
fur huns urp
fyr hyns yrp

-from an observation by argent birka

birth story

crabman
heats the red-yellow glob of glass
withdraws the pipe from the glory hole
and cheek-muscles a puff of air
into the molten centre
inspiration expands from heat
he presses the grown ball
into a water-wet wooden cup
shaping and pressing
flattens the bottom
curves the edge
scores and taps with a knife
the red saucer breaks free