POP!

You know, I was once in a train (as people tend to be) in Guanzhou (which is very far away from where I am now) sandwiched in a flood of strange unknown people in a strange and unknown place,  like a timid little needle in a living, breathing, behemoth of a haystack. I was lucky though. I was not lost (this time that is) and I was not alone - I was with an unlikely bunch of people together on an unusual mission to a hidden little place (that I've never found again on Google maps). It was an interesting day, to be sure, fraught with unlikely encounters and dangers, from rabid puppies to probably-illegal activity in a totalitarian state.

None of this is important for you, though, let's go back to the train.

Munched up by the tides of indifferent people, pressing against me like so many gnarly teeth, a Texan priest (of all people) I was travelling with turned to me with a bounteous smile and said something that I have not yet forgotten. It went something like:

"You know I love to just look at all these people and think about all of those different bubbles, all the different stories, all these people in their own little worlds, thinking about their own little problems, living their own little stories. Just going on, oblivious to all the other little bubbles around them."

I stepped out and looked at all the little people and almost laughed.
All the little bubbles ready to go 'Pop!'

You know, as I trudge through my life of essays and classes, homework and schoolwork, looping like a little wheel, I realise that I really am no different. I plod along with my head down in the mud stressing about all the silly little things that I have to do, not really knowing where I'm going really.

But every now and then I look up.
And every now and then I think (to take a curiously common example) "wow that's a big tree!"

I love the fact though that everyday I get to walk over the freeway on my way home and, when I'm paying attention, look out over all the speedy little cars and trucks and neat houses and trees to the big blue sky stretching its mantle over all and everything. So big! So big it stretches my brain more than any day of school. So big it makes me laugh.

Hahahaha (Pop!)

How good it is to look up at the sky and see how little we are.
How little people look, up and out of their world.
And suddenly, in knowing our littleness our world grows so much bigger.

How funny are clouds! How mighty is the wind! How beautiful the stars, like wounds in a bleak and black and lonely eternity for Heaven to shine right on through.
How big, how beautiful is the world. How much more interesting than the stupid little private universe inside my head.

What a relief it is to know that it's not all about me!

So look up at the sky and realise how little you are. Let your bubble pop!
And let the relief flood in ...
that you are not the centre of the universe.
That it's not about you. It never was about you.
How Good!

In Statu Viae (Springtime)

Sorry for the silence, its been a long cold winter.
Now I find it's the season for poetry.


In Statu Viae

Springtime;
Early frost, worries the heart,
Bites the new blossoms in the bud.
United and apart,
Within and without,
The river, our sister, is crying in the mud,
The perpetual struggle of her sorrowful soul;
The whole world groans to be free.

And I too am not evergreen;
I cannot shrug winter's sting,
My soul, tired, ceases to sing,
Wandering afraid through the tyrant night,
And the cold days of dirty light,
The wind my only comfort.
The whole world moans, thirsting so long to die
And rise;
Trees clicking their fingers in the wind,
Dry old bones.
And the darkness creeps in.
The silence, the awful solitude,
Alone! Alone! even in the magnitude,
And listening for anyone there?

Oh Lord, it is so dark here!
I cannot see! I cannot see!
My Jesus, I trust in Thee.

And you come,
Simplicity, framed by rays more sublime
than the sunrise, sunset, and the gentle night sky.
Too beautiful
The eye is blinded,
But the heart turns and smiles
Gazing at the eternal Springtime.

Growing Up?

So here I am everyone: my last day of childhood.

Tomorrow I step off into the deep dark unknown, the wild and treacherous land of wicked secrets and attractive monsters - adultland.

Ah bugger.

I don't want to go, but I really must.

But before I do go anywhere, it seems there's a certain question I need to finally answer first.

Namely: how on earth does one 'grow up' in the first place?

So here we go.

For me, the process of ‘growing up’ has always been intrinsically tragic, a sad inevitability that could never be avoided, but  should nonetheless be avoided like the plague. The death of joy. The death of wonder. The death of innocence. Then finally … well death. I clutched to my fading childhood as to a tree in a tornado, legs blowing in the wind like streamers as time swept me away.

But, of course it was too late. It had been too late for years.

So my childish sentiment crawled to childish maturity.

It has always seemed to me a great paradox that the young should yearn to be older, while the old should gaze wistfully at their past as it runs by on little new feet. The young rest in the arms of the old, and the old adore the young. One longs for what is coming, the other mourns for what has been lost and left behind.

(Neither know what they really want, and the two really aren't that different. One just has more wrinkles.)

But this is where I'm heading it seems. My best days behind me, having reached the summit, and now I'm rolling down the hill to pick up my sore groaning body at the bottom, take up a walking stick, and assume my destiny as a cantankerous old man, ever barking on about how it was "back in my day" (yesterday) until eventually I keel over and die.

But my heart cries, 'No! It mustn't be.'

And indeed, it mustn't be.

For me, as I imagine most people would, I associated adulthood with experience and childhood with innocence, and the tragic journey of ‘growing up’ the loss of innocence,

sounding like a sad operation that must be undertaken,

like the neutering of dogs or castration of sheep.

But I disagree,

I daresay a mistake has been made here to juxtapose innocence and experience.

I daresay we've confused our understanding of innocence with ignorance.

Rather, I think we'll find that a man who has seen a murder, but did not commit it, is still innocent.

Or a woman who has witnessed a theft, but goes on a jolly chase after the culprit, is still innocent. And innocence is always to be prefered to guilt.

You can know things, you can look upon the world and seen things. But have no part in what you see.

You can see murder, and rape, and porn, and greed, and hatred, and evil, and you can fight back.

As far as I'm concerned, you're still innocent. If only you have the strength to hold on.

And I have no intention of becoming guilty, and rotting away in some inner cell moaning about paradise lost. Or worse, accepting myself as a criminal.

And yet I must grow up?

And so I shall,

Holding and taking my innocence with me.

Because,

Growing up is just as much about knowing what you must hold and take with you, as what you must leave behind.

You have to keep moving, you mustn't stop marching on, just don't drop what you really should not leave behind. Don't forget what you might just (when you are old and wrinkly) look at in a little child one day and miss.

I grow up, old, and wrinkly, but still I remain ...

a little child.

A Mother's Heart

I don't know if there is a love so great between creatures as the love between a mother and her child,  in those first small moments of life. With only the bright, the harsh, the noisy world they have suddenly fallen into and that soft, gentle consolation - the all-encompassing embrace of mama, holding her child like her own heart.

She, all that child's world,
and that child, the whole world, simple and small in her arms.
Holding each other as there is nothing else.

I suppose today is about our mothers, those who held us,
hold us still,
and never let go,
forever and ever.
In oh so many ways we can only try to repay.

This is how we were born,
This is how we will die,
Small and simple,
In the arms of our mother.

Farther than we can reach or closer than we know, let's hold them back today,
and never let go.

(Happy Mother's Day Mama! Thankyou!)

Beauty and the Beholder

Beauty is good,
I think we can all agree. There is something powerful there, a fountain of peace that nourishes the soul. There's something in our hearts that longs for beauty. A moaning abyss at our centre.

Somewhere, deep in the depths, we all long for true beauty in our lives. There is a sad little aesthete sitting at the heart of all of us, with a head full of pictures and poetry and a mouth full of song, lamenting and serenading to a dead audience.

And today I make a stand for that little guy.
And I cry with him against it all that, quite simply:
"Beauty exists."

Aye. Tis true.

There is a wee little heresy tottering about the world these days that mutters in the shadows of dodgy alleyways on the darkest nights with sly confidence that ...
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

But that is quite a silly maxim indeed, that really has very little in it at all.
Which is ironically what it says about everything else.

Because if beauty is only in the eye, well what is it then?
just a shadow? a thought?
Slave to the whim of our moods.
There a moment and lost the next, but never actually there.
Just a thought. Just an illusion. The ethereal fruit of our dreams.
In short, not.
In short, just an flicker in your eye.

It is not so,
beauty is true, it is there, intrinsically, truly being seen and observed, not conjured with smoke and mirrors.
We look upon a sunset and see the light shining wonderfully in our eyes. We see the light, but it is no less real for it. We may grow old and blind, but the light has not changed.
So why should it be any different for beauty?
?

Because it is no different.
The world is not all a grey uninteresting clod of dull vagueness until someone looks upon it and decides some of it looks kinda nice.
No! Sunsets still paint the sky with the colours of the heart. Birdsong still tones the air with joy.
Our eyes ain't got nothing to do with them, they don't give a damn for who's looking at them.
They are beautiful.

And their beauty exists before it is labelled.

We only a leaf is green, because of the pigments therein reflect that colour, and we recognise that.
We only say that something is fast, because it has speed and we recognise that.
We only say someone is old, because they have many years under their belt and we recognise that.
We only say that someone is clever, because they have wit and we recognise that.
We only say something is beautiful, because it has beauty and we recognise it.
These are not labels that we place upon things to give them their speed, or wit, or beauty.
It is a recognition of what is already there.

And as such,
Beauty is more than a label. It remains in all things, to some extent, resting in the furthest star and nearer than the eye.
And that beauty is not dependent on us, and our ability to recognise it or not, because otherwise we are not seeing anything - no flower, no sunset, no star, no piece of art or music in the universe is actually beautiful, we've just labelled them.
But this is not so.
For centuries humanity has fallen to its knees beneath the beauty of the night sky, or bowed before the magnificent rage, the sublime calm of the ocean.
Not before a label, but before a true and awesome beauty.
Deep calls to deep, and our hearts reply,
not in lonely conversation with itself, but with the universe and our God who sustains it.

The eye really has very little to do with it, and neither do we.
We must remember that ourselves and our eyes are the receptors, not the creator.

They only help us see.
And we see only a portion, as though through a mirror dimly. But some see it better than others. Some see it here and not there, and others there but not here. Some people have their hearts open so wide they can see it everywhere. Some can't see it at all.

I daresay that if we saw the true beauty that always surrounds us, we would be blinded.
Just ask my boi Francis.

Death Thou Shalt Die

You have everything to fear, if you fear death. 

Because everything, everyday, may bring you to your last breath. It's tricky dicky like that, death is. It's patient, and then suddenly it's not. Suddenly its right there, staring inches from your face with freaky dead eyes and a pasty cold face, like the worst jump scare ever that just never seems to get old. 

And you know not when its coming.

So why don't we fear?

... 

Sorry that was a bit depressing.

Let's start again.

How about life?

How wonderful is life. How good is it that someone thought to give us such a precious, priceless gift. (And what a beautiful paradox that to keep it we must give it away)

How incredible is it that the earth spins, the sun rises, the moon magnifies, the seasons change, the birds sing, the wind blows, the trees grow, the flowers blossom, and it all moves, a piece of living art.

How fantastic is it that you there are reading this blog, even if you are bored, even if you are not happy, or don't have the strength to smile, 

there you are. You exist. HAZZAH! 

Miraculous. 

How blessed are we.

How wonderful that our bones and bodies and hearts ache. How wonderful is the sting of pain, that fantastic throbbing reminder that 'You are alive my, dear friend. You are alive. Whoopity-doopity-doo! Alive! Alive! Alive! And you can feel.'

How good! Thanks be to God! 

I can't help laughing like a loony even as I write this.

How can we ever stop saying thankyou?

But death...

So why don't we fear?

?

?

?

Could it be?

Just maybe?

That we have no reason to fear?

Not even a right?

That one day our tired aching hearts will find perfect rest?

That, by dying to ourselves and living for others, we can live forever?

What an incredible gift. We must never lose it.

Because, really, we do not have to die. 

Someone else has died for us. 

How can we ever stop saying thankyou?

(An Easter Special)

Crazy little thing called

Happy St. Valentine's Day everyone. I hope it is coming along nicely for you all.

It's an interesting day to be sure, and it sings along rather well with a question I've kept stumbling across recently.

Namely, 'What is love?'
Which I suppose that's at the heart of what this day is about.

What a question.


For most of my life I've always thought of it this way; that love is an emotion.
A warm, fuzzy sort of emotion typically associated with the colour red or pink, in the same way happiness is so obviously yellow (of course, when you really consider it, happiness has more of purpley-brownish tinge). Or something electrifying and shocking, that will suddenly strike like a sneaky assassin and overcome you
like a crusty old sponge would feel dropped into the ocean.
Or that moment when a student looks up to see a hitherto hidden onslaught of SACs on the horizon.
I don't think that so much anymore.

Now, I've begun to see that as a grossly constricted understanding of 'love' - if indeed it holds any truth at all.


And this is why:
If love is naught but a feeling, it is inescapably selfish.
Because a feeling is, by definition, exclusive, and self-centered. No matter how much you feel love for a person, that has no effect on them.
In the same way but on a different road, your anger or hate may have no effect on a person if you still, by force of will, treat them gently and with care.

What affects others is WHAT YOU DO.
Now, of course, our feelings often dictate what we do, if we allow them, and if you feel love for a person, it will probably affect how you act towards them.
But that is besides the point.
The emotion has not included the other person into the exclusive feeling of love.
Only by acts, by decisions, has love been shared.

A typical example is in any newly married couple, who are wrapped in that fuzzy warm love together as they journey off together into the golden sunrise of their new life. But when that fuzzy feeling is gone (as it surely will get bored and sneak quietly out the door like a double-dealing little cat),
when the sunset slips over the horizon and night comes on.
What then?
If love is a feeling and the feeling has gone, what is the point? Why stay.
Feelings are fickle, they come and they go, today then tomorrow. And if a person is only in love as long as the feeling is there,
why stay once it goes.

If love is only feeling.

But personally I can't believe that. I know better than to say that love is for me and my benefit alone. That it is inescapably selfish. And love is the one thing that most surely isn't selfish.
I know that love is more.


So, the answer:
that feelings mean so little, next to nothing. As farts in the wind.

What matters is what you do.
And just so, love is so much more than a passing fancy, any fuzzy, fragile, inconsequential, unsubstantial, emotion.
It is a decision, a will, solidified in an act.

Specifically, as I have come to understand it, wishing the good of another in what you do.
Giving.

What this means is that greatest love is sacrifice. True sacrifice. True gift.
With no thought for yourself, no glory, no consolation to gain, nothing expected in return.
Simply giving, because you love.
Even if you find yourself without,
even if you find yourself hurt,
even if you will lose everything you are and have
you give.

What this means is that love is hard, incredibly so. What ridiculous strength it demands!

It means that love will leave you broken, and empty (although you'll find that somehow, from somewhere, there is always more to give).
Sometimes even unloved in return.

It means love will hurt.

It means that it is not about you.

It means that love is not exclusive, that you can give it to all and anyone.
As simply as with a smile (yes indeed, the glory and power of a forced smile).

It is not important on just one day of the year.

It means that Mother Teresa - living in a perpetual darkness, in a never ending struggle against an ocean of suffering, an unrelenting life of giving everything to everyone she could - loved so much more, so much greater than Casinova, Shakespeare, Paris and Helena combined. And she asked nothing in return.
She was stronger than any one of them.

And she also made that hideous ocean somewhat smaller.

Feelings mean nothing, nothing at all. They dance about us like pixies, ever-morphing
like the trippiest dream, or nightmare.

What matters is what you do.



PS. A curt and dignified nod to Andre F for the idea and solid chat.