InMediasRace

When I was about five years old I was playing in the woods behind my house and got lost. I remember the clearing well–can even picture it in my mind now, stumped branches of dead and dying pine trees sticking out at me like soldiers’ guns, and a thick mat of orange pine needles on the ground. Realizing I was lost, I called for my father, whom I knew was working in the garden nearby. He came almost immediately, scooping me up and carrying me out of this pocket of my universe I had helplessly fallen into.

How many times God has done this for me. I am incredibly fortunate to have an earthly father who exemplifies God’s true character: loving but just, expectant but understanding, patient but demanding discipline. So many of my friends have no such father to look up to, usually because he has left, divorced not only from his wife but from the entire family. This enrages me. At a time in my life when I yearn for a family, I can’t imagine leaving one for selfish pursuits. But I can understand it, because I have experienced the squishy, weak heart that prompts a man to run. To silence his true self and take the silvery path. And since that is the man some of my friends have as a father, it’s become very difficult to convince them of a true, loving Father who created them.

As I look back on that day I was lost, I wonder at a certain memory. I could be fabricating it, but I recall being steady, reassuring myself that I would get out of there. Even if this was the case, it’s only because I knew my father was near. And even as I try to be self-reliant, composed and strong in the midst of self-doubt and situations that chisel at my hope, I can only come to the same conclusion now. I am now a man, roaming in a forest in the midst of my life, and I still need a guide. Sign of weakness or of wisdom, it’s the simple truth.

Now that I find in myself the curious but natural yearning for a child, I think about my own ability to be a father. On some days I have simple confidence; on others, utter skepticism. It is as if I have the opposite problem of those friends I described. How could I hope to be the steadfast example that my father was, when I change so frequently and so extremely? He never did. He never wavered.

But ah–there’s the mistake.

My father never spoke about his work. He worked in corrections, a job no one really wants to take home at the end of the day, so this is understandable. But I always found this curious, why he never vented, never really talked about the challenges he faced there day to day, in that world we as kids could only fantasize about in preparation for our entry into the workforce. But an interesting thing has happened since my father’s retirement. He has begun to speak about those things: the lessons he learned, the very methods of management he used. It’s become a huge boon to me as I take his place in the workforce now. I suspect, and hope, that he’ll start to describe the shortcomings and doubts he held while raising his children.

Just because my father never spoke about his doubts, though, does not mean they didn’t exist, as I was so naively wont to believe. Even as adults we can elevate our parents (or other role models) to superhuman status, but we do so because we cannot see the back of the rug, the gnarly cords and tangled yarn that make up their imperfect yet successful lives. We see our own unfinished and thrice-mended weaving, and weep at the horrible job we think we’re doing. But God sees effort. He sees us trying, and that speaks more to him than we know.

I have no idea if or when I’ll have kids. But I do know that I’m not going to let fear stop me from it. I won’t know what kind of father I’ll be until I get there. But my father will help me. My father will help me.

Of course, I’ve got to find a wife first.

Tenderness rages within me,
searching out a mouth for its voice, a weak-
ness of lip, to split a seam into a fountain.
That I were a spring, to
drench you in my life—
but that role is not mine.
I must be only the vein, the space
within the rock that living water
may smooth and shape into
a vessel, formed by and of the flow.

My would-be love, my hope for more,
expectation seeps from my pores.
I know that this was not our deal:
we said we’d wait, take time to feel
in chemistry’s good time, and time
has incubated my sublime
feelings, which I admit are young.
I’m relearning this tricky tongue–
the one that lets me speak to you
without interpretation’s skew
of the true self I’d have you see;
but all this time you’re changing me.

The man you might learn to adore,
because of doubt, may be no more.

I’m overthinking you.

I think and think, try to recall
your story about that guy Paul.
If I know your stories, I know you,
and any love is only true
through knowing–so I study hard,
yet my overthinking retards
the knowing, so I emerge void.
I clung too well: the thing’s destroyed.

Yet there you are again, after
a few days, a few weeks. Laughter
again bounces between us and
deflects my overthinking. Strands
of your hair now brush fear away,
time drains itself out of the day,
and I love without checking first.
My thoughts lose their immortal thirst.

2008-08-02

We check tickets and tick checkboxes.
A millimeter move of the index,
a few centimeters slides the wrist.

A hard day’s work?

Thousands of miles of neurons
have been traveled today,
But this is far from the ax-swing
of our fathers,
The fall of the maul in their ancestors’ hands.

The only sun we know builds the machines
we now call our farms.
Are we atrophying?
Or are we stronger than we know?

I can pass a test,
But could I win in a barfight?

2007-04-13

A classmate of mine was once almost pickpocketed in the Paris metro. He described it as a laughable occurrence, and I have to agree: the thief tried to steal the wallet out of his back pocket, and when my classmate realized what was happening, he simply turned and looked the thief in the eye. The guy stared back, backed up, and walked away.

I find moments in my day when my thoughts are threatened in the same way my friend’s wallet was. I believe Satan tries to pickpocket our sense of peace by stealing our good thoughts. Or maybe he tries to plant absurd, fearful ones. But when I’m in my right mind and the Spirit guides me, I can turn, look the Devil in the eye, and bid him walk away.

Perhaps you don’t believe in a supernatural aspect to this sort of phenomenon. If not, that’s fine; but you should believe it exists. Millions of people face it each day. We are our thoughts, and we become what we dwell on.

Problem is, fending off the pickpocket is not always this easy or practical. Our minds are so blessedly malleable, but that very property, which allowed humans to break escape gravity, build the combustible engine, and write profound fiction, is the very one that can turn our minds against themselves and into depression. Sometimes this happens in the span of days or weeks, sometimes years. Now that my mind has healed from depression I can now in retrospect identify exact moments in time when I sabotaged myself, such as a moment at 18 years old when I began to believe that I should devote 100 percent of my thoughts to my passion of writing, and filter every life experience through its lens. Ever tried to do that with your chosen discipline? Luckily you realized its futility before you drove yourself mad; and if not, well, madness has its lessons as well.

So what do we do when we find our thoughts attacked, either from within or from without? First, we must realize that the attacker is a ninja. And so, we must take a lesson from Splinter: that ninja strike hard and fade away, without a trace. If you can’t identify the attacker–or, indeed, whether there was an attack at all–then you’re doomed to fall to the malicious thought.

If you have identified the attacker, however, then you’re a giant step closer to foiling him. The other aspect of this I’ve found is that thoughts, rather than being instantaneous impulses in the mind, have stages. A perfect example of this is sexual attraction. I catch a glimpse of a girl’s body, perhaps intentionally, perhaps unintentionally, and I have a thought that I am attracted to her. And for a portion of time perhaps indefinable outside of quantum mechanics, I have a choice. I can carry that thought through into sin; or I can let it drop; or I can allow it to ascend into a purely aesthetic appreciation for God’s creation, and thereby see the woman from His perspective, and not my own. The point is that there is a chance for change: our thoughts do not own us when we realize this.

Finally, there is the counterattack. I’ve found this most often takes the form of letting the thought drop, and moving on. If you believe Satan’s in it, tell him to get lost. Whatever your method, eliminate the thought by “taking it captive”, as the Scripture says (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Yet there are still times in our lives when we simply cannot combat these malicious thoughts on our own. What then? This is where practical application becomes difficult. But God has given us a way, and that is simply through prayer. It goes something like the business plan of certain Underpants Gnomes living beneath South Park:

Step 1: Pray.
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!

There’s almost no definable reason why it should work. I can’t say, “Pray, and then you’ll feel yourself change, and then you’ll have strength to combat your fear and despair,” because the feeling of change might not happen. Our emotions can confuse us, so I believe that God sometimes chooses to skip over them (this is at least so in my case). So the practical application here becomes hard to explain, but I assure you, it works (unlike many business plans).

Thoughts can be mastered, no matter what we feel. The thief comes to steal and destroy, so get your baseball bat. I assure you, God approves.