use it or lose it, the blogging chromosome

sean says that if i only post once a week, i'd better make each post darn good, but as i watch these words tumble from my mind to blogger's posting page, the rust is palpable. it's been nearly a month since i updated this site regularly, and i fear that the blogging cortex of my brain has been attacked by some unseemly parasite.

in the context of the 17 point scale, i'm not sure what that means. it's not like i have a history of poetic profundity on this blog, but something is dying. i suddenly find myself at a loss for words. yes, this mysterious parasite has cast an odd spell on me. as it steals away the anecdotes and observations that (to me) define this blog, it leaves me feeling oddly happy. during the week i live a bright and sunny psychosis, glad that i don't have to ponder the days events looking for rare insight or colorful metaphors to anchor my midnight musings. i can be lazy again.

and consequently i go blind. i fill my world with baseball scores and second round NFL draft predictions. i rekindle my addiction to istockphoto.com. and i forget how to process the world for web content.

of course, this tug and pull is the way of life: i blog and thus i sleep less; i travel, and my piano fingers wither; i fall in love, get married, and have two dozen kids, and my closest friends fade into the forgettable periphery. gain and loss, x and y chromosomes that follow each other everywhere they go. it's odd, i just can't escape the nostalgia for that loss. i long for the days when my blog rocked (okay, long is a bit overdoing it there), i long for the days when i was great friends with this person and that person. i even long for what might have been.

okay, my sentences are beginning to seesaw--that's a clue that i'm becoming overly sentimental, so i'll close. here's the prayer of today's blog: Lord, hasten the day when the laws of nature implode and leave us lossless in your arms. amen.

andrew david. "17 points of light pass behind a dark cloud" belize.

ps. perhaps my blog is back to normal, because that is totally not what i intended to blog about!

black (death) peak - part II

[continued from the previous post where andrew recounts being marooned on a slippery rock face in the northern cascades]

not yet.

i wasn't ready to risk my life on one crazy superman trick. it was a phantom rock, after all, and i might not spot it until i sailed by. gravity may get me, but there was no need to hasten my fall.

at that point steve suggested that he run up the mountain and see if anyone might have some rope. earlier we'd seen at least two parties making the trek toward black peak. in the sunlight their helmeted heads had glowed the yellow of angel halos. perhaps they'd be ready and equipped for just this kind of thing.

but at first i was oddly opposed to the idea. "try looking from over there," i said. three fingers of one hand were barely wedged in a crack and my other hand was maintaining a tenuous grip on a slippery knob-like rock to my right, but i wanted to do this myself. the thought of seeking help from another group of hikers was embarrassing, humiliating; it was admitting defeat. i had already calculated my chances of survival without a rope - every scenario led to a nasty conclusion, yet hubris somehow stalled my decision to send steve away. i imagined a man with 20 international summits to his credit frowning down at me and saying, "what are you doing, little man, on this class 5.13b cliff-face? where is your gear? hrmmphh."

after several seconds passed, i realized that i could probably bear a condescending smirk, especially if it saved my life. steve sprinted up the mountain after a rope.

after steve left, i quite incredulously realized that i hadn't been praying. "what the crap, God," i began, "why haven't i been praying this whole time?" for some reason, He didn't bother answering my rhetorical question, so i continued with something a bit more conventional, something more like "help me!" and "forgive me for..." and "God, do you hate these emergency, self-centered prayers?"

as i clung to the rock and prayed, my right leg began to shake again. i adjusted myself a bit and then closed my eyes and tried to lay completely still. it was strangely peaceful. i somehow believed that my leg wouldn't shake again and that steve would return with my means of salvation. i thought about sitting, and about what great fun it is to do nothing, to finish a hike and just relax. all this thinking seemed to go straight to my feet: to my horror, they were starting to tingle. "not a great place for my feet to fall asleep," i thought.

occasionally an invisible bug buzzed past my head--perhaps a fly, a bee, or some other insect vulture. like a rogue rescue copter, it seemed to circle my general vicinity, uncertain at this altitude whether i was friend or foe. thankfully, it didn't land. next, my sleepy feet and i heard voices, and then the approach of steve.

"they didn't have rope," he explained.

"uh oh," i thought.

then steve, oh, wonderful steve, concocted a brilliant plan. he tied his two shirts together and knotted them to his pack. as he approached my position, a few rocks tumbled off to my left, frightening the fly and i. then steve carefully lowered the pack down to me. once it was within my reach, i flailed out my arm and caught hold of the shoulder strap. as steve pulled upward, i used my free arm and legs to scramble the remaining 8 feet until i collapsed safely on the top of the ridge.

whoohooo! praise God (and steve), i survived. relieved, i let out a big sigh and a nervous chuckle. then steve and i hugged, took some photos, and made our way to the top of the summit.

beth the s.o. "photos for jessica" moma, nyc.

God, google, and the carthusians

"what's a devotional?" asked ben, one of the soldiers in debby's statistics army.

i stared at him.

rebecca came to my rescue be explaining that the term 'devotions' is christianese for hallmark card theology. that is, generally you pick out a passage of scripture--preferrably something from the gospels or the psalms--and share a happy little anecdote or a quick moral. it's spoon-fed christianity.

she makes some good points, but i don't entirely agree. even simple one page devotions don't seem quite that cookie-cutter to me. and even if she's right, that's not the kind of devotional that i intend to bring to the campfire on saturday night. but how to jump above the cookie-cutter conundrum?

first, pray. that's how i spent most of yesterday, praying and googling. the prayers were petitions for inspiration and desire. praying for desire may sound kind of funny, but it's been a while since i've looked forward to reading the good book. i'd like to see it sitting on my desk and think, "gosh, i want to read that," but it's not often like that.

and then the world turned upside-down. you see, i've always thought that it would be great if prayer worked like google. give God a request and then 0.38 seconds later He gives you 15,800,000 answers sorted from best to least relevant. however, yesterday i felt far more answered by God than by any silly google hit. i was looking for poems, short stories, encyclopedia entries--anything that might correspond cooly to saturday's passage from the daily lectionary (look to your left)--but alas, i stumbled onto nothing. in one sense it was a productive evening: i had a long talk with God. but i was still stuck in terms of that saturday deadline.

that's when it helps to date beth. she turned me on to the lectio divina, the perfect centerpiece for a saturday devotional. hooray for beth! hooray for God! hooray for the carthusian monks!


andrew david (and rene magritte) "the statcounter" moma, nyc. (magritte tells me that in cyberfrench that translates to "i'm watching you")

a crazy cool scriptural epiphany

okay, i was in the process of going to sleep (head on pillow, eyes clothes), when i suddenly had this thought--and i feel a somehow like the speaker in ts eliot's Journey of the Magi when he suddenly interrupts the poem's running narrative to emphatically exclaim: "...but set down/This set down/This: ...." so, like eliot's aging wiseman, i will (interrupt my narrative of sleep and) tumble toward some capital 't' truth without wasting time to quibble with words or style (ie i'm giving myself 2 more minutes to finish this)--in joel 2:32, acts 2:21, and romans 10:13 the writers proclaims that 'everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.' its one of the few verses that i can still remember (although i only remembered it once, not thrice). however, i have ALWAYS interrupted it in a rather straightforward manner, especially in terms of the 'from' phrase that seems to implicitly wait at the end of the verse. for example:

if you call when depressed, in need of strength for the day ahead, or desiring patience for that annoying co-worker, you will be saved.

if you call while being attacked by rabid coyotes and walruses, you will be saved (and then the theological question becomes, what does He mean by 'saved'?)

if you are being shadowed by the devil and his legions, you will be saved.

if you are burdened by your sins, you will be saved.

etc, etc, you will be saved.

these somewhat traditional applications of the verse(s) are certainly apt -- i'm sure i've used them all. but they also seem a little...irresponsible....as if the act of calling for salvation first requires shifting the focus of my insecurity or problems to someone or something else. 'save me from this!' or 'save me from that!' but what do i really need saving from? MYSELF! i know, this is certainly not profound, but i feel like its crazy cool. i can't believe i never thought of this. indeed, Lord, I'm calling upon you -- save me! save me from myself...

quick praises [in ref. to 9/19: quick prayer requests]

Greg and Danielle got primary custody of anthony. the mother has visitation rights every other weekend.

The woman with the hurting back is no more. I don't mean that she died, just that her back is better, her medical insurance covers her, or she is just a very nice woman. In any case, this means that I won't be forced to pay her medical bills.

quick prayer requests

1. my aunt and uncle (Greg & Danielle) are meeting this morning with a judge re: the adoption of their grandson, Anthony. His parents (including my cousin) are not stable (past or possibly current drugs, alcohol, hate each other, etc) and it hasn't been a good situation. Anyway, the meeting is this morning. Please pray that it goes well (and really going well would be if G&D got custody)...

2. i might have to pay for someone's injuries for a rear-ending last week. pray that they're okay (and thus, my pocketbook is okay). Her name is Mary or Marriam. She's seeing a doctor today.
thamks


here they are (w/a bit of my parents thrown in)