Tag Archives: God

Prime & Paint

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A fashion designer would describe it as “mesmerize.” I would describe it as “slate.” A normal person would describe it as “bluish gray.” It is the color of our new church building.

I grab a roller and a tray, position my headphones and pick Steve Reich’s The Four Sections. It is minimal and meditative without being simplistic or repetitive. The mallet percussion become little monks ringing little bells in my ears, calling me to divine serenity.

And I need SERENITY NOW! It’s that damn Dallas Willard. Such a harmless name, isn’t it? Like a southern small town high school math teacher. To me, he’s more dangerous than Michael Jackson. Particularly for referring to a certain Bible version’s translation of a verse as “terribly mistaken.”*

Terribly mistaken?

This statement is like selling bombs to terrorists. It’s like giving Satan the key to the front door, the back door, the cat door. It’s like, wrong? God’s not powerful enough to ensure accurate translation of this verse? What about the rest of His Word?**

I remove my headphones and release all of this to my Pastor, who is painting next to me.

“Yeah, well, you know, the original Hebrew doesn’t say Mary was a virgin,” he informs, “it says she was a young maiden.”

“What has been primed and what has been painted?” I snap, waving at the wall. “I can’t tell the difference.”

“I know they’re close, ” he says, “but get some light on it, you’ll be able to tell.”

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*Context of the quote, for those who care: “…translations of Matt. 5:28 that say, ‘everyone who looks at a woman and desires her,’ or ‘everyone who looks at a woman with desire,’ are terribly mistaken.” And now the context of me, for those who care: Although I look at women, especially when they are talking to me, I do not and desire them or with desire them. I do desire to be them, but only when they are touching some intolerably attractive man.

**The slippery slope argument, or, as I call it, the Slip ‘n Slide argument. It’s all fun and games until someone breaks their neck. Which, sadly, actually happened a couple of times.

Holding Pattern

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I can turn wine into weakness faster than Jesus turned water into wine. Which is what I am doing tonight.

A night where we sit on the patio, dabbing our pulse points with vanilla extract. It’s supposed to repel mosquitoes. It makes us smell like cupcakes.

Everyone is husband and wife, or boyfriend and girlfriend. Two candles on a mantel, glowing with the relief that at least they aren’t alone. Everyone except me, the one burning at both ends.

This incites a brief debate in my mind about whether to have a second glass of wine. Against: some nice 89 year old with Alzheimer’s. For: a horny Harvard senior with a high IQ. It is a merciful victory. A third glass is poured in celebration.

“I’m so glad you have one another,” I address a candle set, “But I don’t think God wants that for me.”

I’m beginning to resemble Bobby in Company so I walk away. I scroll through my cell phone book. I collect lint from my navel like cotton candy out of a machine. I select someone. I drill for more lint. I text:

“So mysterious and sufficient is the love of God. And yet, some nights I just want someone to hold me.”

It’s a miracle my phone doesn’t throw up after eating that shit.

The next morning, as I undress to shower, there is a gleam of encrusted blood in my navel. Gingerly I clean with Q-tips, who, in their soft sterility, imply I should have employed them to do this job at the start.

When I turn my phone back on, it groans, remembering what it did last night. Pause. Then it receives a text message:

“If you were my son, I would hold you.”

In Our Midst

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We are young but we used to be younger.

Then we were children of the revolution, determined to enjoy ourselves, wringing the beauty out of every moment. Now we are adullts, trying to understand ourselves, wringing our cell phones:

“I’m afraid if I went back to then I wouldn’t take things back like I sometimes say I would. I’m afraid I would do more of them. And that it would be as good as I remember,” She says.

“Now it’s like we’re always before or after and never in the middle of it,” I say.

We hang up. I walk to my car to drive to a safe neighborhood to walk.

Minutes later I am 20 blocks away and several social classes up. Surrounded by huge, staring homes, I light a cigar. The tip grows and burns.

“Life’s a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!” Rosalind Russell shouts in my mind. We’re not starving, we’ve forgotten how to be hungry.

I almost walk into a low hanging branch of a lilac tree. Cupping the blossom, like it will leak through my fingers, I lift it to my face. The smell of cigar and lilac drive into the two-car garage of my nose and crash into something in my mind.

I’m laughing. I’m thinking of Him. I’m texting her: He knows the plans He has for us.

It Had To Be You

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a restaurant should not have a stage. isn’t food entertaining enough? but this restaurant does and i am on it. the piano player begins  “it had to be you,” and speaking of which, You are somewhere in the dimness.

my lips part and my voice lilts with timid desire.

talking – (disrespectful but i will be merciful) – scREEching microphone – (i smile louder to dissuade a duet) – bReAKing diShEs – (my eyes shock closed and my shoulders jerk, soldiers disobeying orders before i can give them) – Waiter takes an order and telephone rings – (i grip the microphone like a bullhorn)

Sabotage is a multitasker. i’m distracted by the noise, enraged at the noisemakers, disgusted with being distracted by and enraged at the noisemakers.

finally we’re outside and walking and You’re telling me, “you have a wonderful voice.” i can’t believe it but then i remember: it is a new song, i’m still learning it, and it is for You.

Children of God

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Even as a child I hated children. I saw them as messengers from Satan. He planted mockery in their moist minds and it bloomed out of their mouths and I kept that vile bloom in a vase. I grew up changing the water, giving it fertilizer, keeping it alive. Until as an adult I hated children.

Then God asked me to move into this community house, in a neighborhood swarming with children.

“God!” I laughed, “You are so funny.”

“I am,” He replied, “But now I’m serious.”

God has a sense of humor, but I have no sense, so often he is reduced to a running joke, which runs me over until I understand.

“God!” I shouted, “I’ll move in. Are you happy?”

“I am,” He replied, “Now do it.”

So I did. I took things down and put them up. I lifted things up and set them down. I sat down and I stood up. I thought, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know why I’m doing it.

And the children came unto me. Loudly.

Actually, they came unto a weekly bible club. It’s led by my 4 housemates, who in personality and/or appearance resemble a Doberman Pinscher, a Border Collie, a Golden Retriever and a Beagle. They make a good team.

I am the Chihuahua. At every child’s squeal, my eyes bulge and my body trembles.

This week the leader is talking about how even though Jesus was God, He washed the feet of people. Even those He didn’t like. Even His enemies.

The leader requests that the children remove their socks. After reveling in a theatrical ecstasy of disgust, they do. He takes old ice cream buckets and fills them with water. His big hands lower their little feet into the water. Their squeals sound different.

“Could I wash someone’s feet?’ I say, but none of us hear me.

I watch and wait. I wait and watch. Long, longer, too long, long enough.

“Could I wash someone’s feet?’ I say again.

“Oh, I don’t think there’s anyone left,” The leader says.

Sadness settles around my heart. Something was opened for a moment, and I didn’t enter it. The children did.

Solong

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“Do you have–”

A karaoke bar in Milwaukee is more likely to have an AA meeting than this song. The part of my ego is overplayed by a Fop, who raises a handkerchief to his nose, ready to whip out a fan when the answer is no. But before I finish asking he starts answering:

“Just write it down.”

Effrontery from a karaoke vendor! Fop and fan flail like an injured bird; painted lips prepare for a reproach. Steady, alliteration. Steady, ego. Steady, hand. Just write it down. We do. After viewing many vocal achievements of skill and shamelessness, the vendor finishes answering my question:

“OK, now here’s Ben, singing ‘This Train Don’t Stop There Anymore.'”

They have it! Now I have to do it. Those resigned piano chords trudge towards a beginning. While I am singing, I do not imagine Elton John, or Justin Timberlake playing Elton John. A screen displays the lyrics, my biography:

I used to be the main express / All steam and whistles heading west / Picking up my pain from door to door / Riding on the storyline / Furnace burning overtime / But this train don’t stop / This train don’t stop / This train don’t stop there anymore.

It was east, not west, but everything else is right. I was uncommon; by thirty I was going to be “pretty f—ing amazing.” A creature believing it could recreate itself.  My Own Private Id raced through a dark tunnel of desire.

When I said that I don’t care / It really means my engine’s breaking down / The chisel chips my heart again / The granite cracks beneath my skin / I crumble into pieces on the ground.

Broken, chipping, cracking and crumbling. This is how a Sculptor creates a sculpture. I’m not scared.

The song is over. Everyone is staring. Returning the mic to its holder, I step away from the screen.

Remaking

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To the introvert, the mirror is the window. I stand before it this morning, looking out on my landscape.

Feathery auburn firmament. Two small oceans of pale blue, surrounded by white sand. One gigantic shell on the right side of each ocean. Two tunnels leading into blackness. A canyon of supple crimson, protected by faint yellow boulders. The terrain is inflamed and pockmarked.

Sorry, but I’m the only local, so I do all of the complaining and all of the listening.

Most mornings, I call in the planes, which dust the landscape with a beige powder that forgives most of the topographical flaws. But this morning I am tired. I don’t care what the tourists think anymore. No, that’s not it. I remember who made it.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”

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St. Paul convicts by way of confession. He’s like Scorpion in Mortal Kombat, throwing his arrow of truth right into my heart, pulling towards him, and then uppercutting me. But in the name of God, not revenge.

I understand why he’s upset; he’s celibate.

I know how upsetting it is. All of that extraneous sexual energy is redirected into my personality, which decides to form a color guard, with flags flailing with flamboyance, airblades slashing with wit, batons thrusting with independence, sabers stabbing with superiority.

But when the crowd goes home, I am alone. That pagan skeleton inside of me starts to dance. How sexy can it be without being sex? he asks, and his distal phalange screeches on the blackboard as he writes the equations:

(interesting person – only interested in their body) touching over underwear + kissing with tongue = delectable, forgivable

(seemingly nice person – never met them before) taking off shirts/pulling down underwear x groping organs until they orgasm = incredible, despicable

Expressions, identities, constants, variables…The math can’t explain my actions, or solve my regret. I am on the ground. I am bleeding from the heart.

Then St. Paul is at my side, offering a hand, saying, “And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.”

Upper & Lower

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I call it my office. I don’t call it my bedroom. It’s not big enough for either.

My bed is lofted about 5’4″. If the Brewers decided to play baseball on the floor, the bed would be the nosebleed section. Upstairs I can hear the landlord and his lady pounding the keys of their sexual organs. My roommates bring their boyfriends home, shut their doors, and – gIGGle – shhhh – gIGGle – shhh.

God’s going to use my gonads for his glory, not for my gratification.

The conventional diagnosis for this is sexual frustration, but I prefer sexual circumvention – rerouting the passion for a more productive use.

I am a string figure in God’s hands. He knows that being in a relationship would distract me from being an artist, so he allowed Satan to make me selfish. He knows that without a struggle I would be without inspiration, so he allowed Satan to make me homosexual.

Today a co-worker held up a cable and said, “see? This is a male to male connection.” Inside, I was a studio audience, and Satan was Lucille Ball.

I laughed my ass off.

Divorce Court

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I sit here. An only child. Satan and God are battling for custody. I have two daddies! But they are not together. They have never been together.

I sit staring straight ahead, but my concentration has the strength of a dead dandelion. One suggestive exhale and the seeds of doubt loosen and drift, land and root.

Satan’s outfit is a scientific study of cool. Classification: self-consciously careless. The tight tailored black pants with extra length that gathers around the boot. The oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The slicked-back hair with a few strands falling forward. Some would say he’s always closing a deal; he would say he’s always “gaining agreement.”  He walks to my side, gently curls the hair behind my ear and speaks softly into it. The words are fur handcuffs – individuality, dignity,  rights – that seem sexy, until you can’t squeeze out of them.  He places his hands on my shoulders, his body leaning into my back. The body heat is a current – natural, justifiable, persuasive – that makes me lean back into him.

God’s outfit? Even in the early ’90’s, in Seattle, it wouldn’t have been cool. Shapeless robe stitched of rags. Unshaven. Hair to His waist. Clean, though. And those eyes – the warmth and danger of glowing coals. I have a lot of time to look into those eyes, because they’re always looking at me. He doesn’t talk nearly as much as Satan; when He does it’s clearer, but more confusing. The words are ropes – submission, humility, self-denial – that bind and strengthen. He stands and opens His arms to me. The posture is a cross – humiliating, absolute, restorative – that draws me to Him.

I look for a judge, a jury, a door – there are none. Then I remember. The three of us have always been here. We will always be here. And my choice changes by the moment.