letters from barabbas

When I got back from Our Town in Atlanta my apartment was full of friends.
I've rarely felt so sentimental. We sat enraptured as Benji read the whole book aloud.
While he read, Alex was singing Kevin Prosch from across the room:

There's a cry I have had: that I could love my brothers
Not to look at their race, their religion or their color
You love the Presbyterians, and the gays and the lesbians
You love the Buddhists and the prostitutes
You're not like us--we're always changing
But you see through our sins, and you love us anyway

My eyes welled up a little as Emily's words ran round and round my head:

Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, just for a moment let's be happy. Let's look at one another!
I can't! I can't go on! It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed! Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anyone to realize you! Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?

Alex had finished singing and spread himself across my chest by the last page:

"I am sorry," sighed the tree.
"I wish that I could
give you something...
but I have nothing left. I am just
an old stump. I am sorry...."

"I don't need very much now,"
said the boy,
"just a quiet place to sit and rest.
I am very tired."
"Well," said the tree,
straightening herself up
as much as she could,
"well, and old stump is good
for sitting and resting.
Come, Boy, sit down.
Sit down and rest."

And the boy did.

And the tree was happy.

Today at China Palace I was watching MSNBC on closed captioned big screen, taking tips about post-graduation job hunting (because I'm incapable of ignoring restaurant televisions): interviews, investments, intensity. Oh, and don't be afraid to follow your passions. Lots of people are doing things they care about these days...after retirement, of course. Secure yourself a pension, and then maybe you can actually exist for your last fifteen years. They went on to say that more Americans work abroad than one might think, flashing a website to visit, and just as I raised my eyebrow at the recommendation, I read my fortune cookie:

:) You are always welcome in any gathering. :)

I mean, how can you fight with the implications of this "coincidence"? I've wanted to work overseas ever since high school.
And the final kicker! This was the quote in my word-a-day today:

I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind instead of reading about them, and of the bitter effects of staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an Islander, that I think there should be a law amongst us to set our young men abroad for a term among the few allies our wars have left us.

-Lord Byron, poet (1788-1824)

Make [an idiot of yourself] someone's day.


Oh, don't you wish I had a picture of this one? Unfortunately, nobody could whip out their cameraphone in time to catch the action.
As I was walking down the stairs at the acquatics center, I was watching Maurice stare in wonder at the Endless Pool, so I didn't pay attention to how I was turning. Who puts a big glass panel on either side of the doorway, anyway? Just as he turned around to face me, I smacked it hard, and he doubled up laughing.
A year ago, I would have been mortified, but thankfully we were both able to laugh hysterically at my mistake. I'm pretty sure the chuckle did more for my heart than the thirty minutes of aerobic exercise that followed, so I can't complain.
You should try to be less graceful. In the right company, it can be quite nice. :)

After six months of abstinence based upon principle, Miss Calla Maria Davis has finally graced us with her presence in the blogosphere. With Ingrid (her brand new Compaq Presario) close beside, she's now free to post with unprecedented mobility--whenever and wherever inspiration strikes.
Compared to yours's truly, her weblog is twice as nice and unaffected, and probably way more important. For all of you who want to get a glimpse, here's your chance. :)

Those azaleas are receding today: the ones that sheared my winter wool. But I realized with some satisfaction in the morning's bright blue sky that they hadn't lost their faith in us. Not in the least.
They are the world's wedding party, bedecked in their best beauty to wish us on our happy way, who, after packing up our gifts into the shaving-creamed car, will withdraw for some time into the background, not standing too much out, and smile to see our happiness in full summer swell.
But I think that we can trust them to return again to brighten up our winter gloom, when the time is right.

The same wire globe that hung behind my head in the architecture courtyard as I journalled desperately to Him Friday morning has been moved today to the concourse, where I sat quietly this morning allowing Him to speak to me through Ohio. It's propped up and connected to solar panels: rotating free and open and beautiful, no longer stuck silent up against a moldy brick balcony, almost out of sight. It's a symbol of Himself, free to move in mystery through my heart once again. This morning when I opened my eyes, I saw Him staring attentively at the furrow in my brow, smiling in relief as it melted into a sigh of gratitude.

I realized that I love the rain so much because it fills the otherwise empty sky with matter. A dimness that's fuller than sunlight. But I'm learning to see Him in the open sky, too: it's never empty. Curt Harlow speculates that God lives in the gaps between the stars.
Whether or not, I'm more comfortable in the sun than I once was.

Nobody Number One
I'm afraid I've lost the piece of me
I need the most you see
This puzzle is really just about the need
To be somebody
I'm afraid I'm not all that you see
All along the coast of me
I'm camouflaged, a desert mirage
A nobody

But you came so close and I assumed
You were looking
For the piece of yourself that's lost
It is the hiding place inside everybody
And though we love to numb the pain
We come to learn that it's in vain
Pain is our mother
She makes us recognize each other

C'mon now child don't cry
C'mon now child don't cry
Let's give it one more try
C'mon now child don't cry

Sometimes I feel so all alone
Here in this city I call my home
They say, Hey, you're one of us
Funny I should feel so anonymous
But I'm drawn to you
And that still small voice is talking too
And that's the voice that so seldom can get through

You can't put no band-aid on this cancer
Like a twenty-dollar bill
For a topless dancer
You need questions
Forget about the answers
Do you really wanna die this way?

That's the trouble with you and me
We always hit the bottom 'fore we get set free
I'm so far down I'm beginning to breathe

C'mon now child don't cry
C'mon now child don't cry
Let's give it one more try
C'mon now child don't cry
Cuz we're just too young to die

--Over the Rhine, one of my new favorites

A girl from my swimming class walked by me as I was panting in the mid-morning sun on a bench right outside the pool after a killer workout, trying to regain my strength.
"How are you? Oh, I'm fine. You have great push-ups, by the way. I was next to you on the mat one time, and I was just really impressed."
And I had worried each time the push-up sets approached, worried that I wouldn't be able to finish, because I've always associated the exercise with a virility I thought I lacked.

I found this on my memory key, the too lengthy introduction to the first draft of the post about preferences driving us apart, and it made me laugh. It's probably some sort of pathetic blogger disease to think that something I wrote that makes me laugh four months later would also make someone else in the world laugh, but if it is, I don't think they've got any medicine for it yet, so...


When I was in Kindergarten, the class day was over at noon. My mother was a substitute teacher, so some days I had to stay at the school for afternoon daycare. During lunch our caretaker would distribute plates with the main course already prepped, and then circle around to offer each side dish individually. If it was something we liked, we said, "Yes, please," and she would give us two spoonfuls. If it was something we didn't like, we would say, "No, thank you," and she would give us one spoonful. We were required to eat everything they put before us.
It was a private school, you see, so they had the power to require that sort of thing.
I was a very finicky Kindergartener. Although I loathed all vegetables but celery with peanut butter, my least favorite side dish was cooked carrots, especially when mixed with English peas. Blegh! My keen sense of social justice was outraged every time I was not fed a hamburger with french fries and ketchup (i.e. every day but Friday): the only offer to elicit the coveted yes, please from my discerning mouth. I gnashed my teeth as I ate those carrots, and swore to next week eat nothing but cake.
I've grown a bit more tolerant in my old age. Although I'm still not too fond of English peas, I now consider cooked carrots a paragon of earthly delight. What once sent my pharynx into convulsions now sends my palate into exultations. That same year, I threw up all over the dinner table when my dad forced me to eat broccoli. I really did--all over my plate and the salad dressings. But I can put down some broccoli casserole these days, and I can even stomach the raw stuff if I smother it in ranch dip and close my eyes until I swallow.
Why the change of heart? Did my tastebuds mutate after years of standing too close to the microwave? Or, after gaining control of my gag reflex, did I finally learn to appreciate a wider range of sensational experience?

Was my hatred for vegetables a diversifying idiosyncrasy to be embraced, or a sign of immaturity that needed to be erased?

never swallow the lump in your throat
spit it out

Born

wistful hysteria

azaleas are abloom again.
why are we still wearing winter?

I was moved by Mean Creek over the break, and I think you would be, too.
It's a beautiful film, worth even watching on mute.
Every single image, every character carries so much meaning, so much weight.
Representations evolve into allegory as the ugly interiors of the children surface on their beautiful outsides, and yet the conclusion seems as vague as the fog that fills the final shot.
This one asks lots of questions, and leaves you to answer them for yourself. I like that.

Jeffrey Overstreet from Looking Closer has a compelling interview with the film's director that you should read to pique your interest.
Please read it and think about renting the movie. You'll probably be glad you did.

Where did Barabbas go after they released him? Does Luke tell us?
I mean, he was a real person, with real experiences, not just some parable to be conflated into some elaborate doctrine.
As much as I want to allegorize him, say that he dissolved into the hearts of everyone who looked upon His bloody, bleeding body, seeping into the spirits of everyone who believed upon His bloody, bursting heart to remind us of our own bloody rebellion, and how His bloody, splintered cross brought the weight of murder on each of our heads too, and the bloody, empty tomb transformed our bloody, lifeless carcasses to something guiltless and eternal,
what if he just went out and picked up a whore?

One phrase drowned out the rest of the sermon Easter Sunday:

"Release to us Barabbas"--who had been thrown into prison for a certain rebellion made in the city, and for murder (read the full story here).

Condemned for rebellion, replaced by Jesus on the cross. It's the Gospel in one sentence!
And all this time I'd spat on Barabbas, hated him for getting off so easy.
Spat upon myself.

Thinking of changing the name of my site to something like "letters from barabbas."
What do you guys think?
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