when the waves turn the minutes to hours

my father used to/still does sing this song whenever the waves begin to pick up on the lake. my mother always quickly hushes him, but we all sit there humming in under our breath. saying these little prayers. looking out over the lake that is so calm and gentle, yet so ruthless and unforgiving. its this level of respect for the water. i couldn't quite explain it when asked recently, but the song always seems to sum it up.


"The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called 'Gitche Gumee'
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty.
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early.
The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ship's bell rang
Could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too,
T'was the witch of November come stealin'.
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the Gales of November came slashin'.
When afternoon came it was freezin' rain
In the face of a hurricane west wind.

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'.
Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya.
At Seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in, he said
Fellas, it's been good t'know ya
The captain wired in he had water comin' in
And the good ship and crew was in peril.
And later that night when his lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searches all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
May have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion.
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams;
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her,
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the Gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral.
The church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call 'Gitche Gumee'.
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early!"

we are (hopefully) not pessimistic space cadets.

infinity is now.

my brother and i decided this today.

if infinity exists before us and after us and time is irrelevant, then infinity is now.

and now.

and now.

and now.

and we are infinite.

not in our shape. not in who we are. not what we are. but what we are made of. the neutrons and electrons and protons that comprise our body will be traded to the earth and its creatures for our decomposition. and we are infinite.

we are infinite because the events and people that came before us. without them...we are not. we are infinite because of our future. our possibilities. our potential.

we have class together (Christopher and I) and much of the conversation is in regards to how we know that we know. and if the more we "know", we realize that we really know nothing at all, then what is the point in trying to "know" anything?

are we doomed to be pessimistic space cadets?

maybe, but I think there is another option.

maybe the more we "know", and the more we realize we really know nothing at all, then the more we realize how much we can consume. maybe we have the opportunity to "know" (or at least try to have some sort of idea) about so much more then we initially assumed.

maybe the possibilities for knowledge are...infinite.

mere adjectives

"They wanted, as we say, 

to 'call their souls their own.' 

But that means to live a lie, 

for our souls are not, in fact, our own. 

They wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to God,

 'This is our business, not yours.' 

But there is no such corner. 

They wanted to be nouns, 

but they were, and eternally must be,

mere adjectives."

-c.s. lewis

"He has

paid us

the 

intolerable

compliment

of loving us,

in the deepest, 

most tragic,

most inexorable

sense."

-c.s. lewis

"God might have arrested this problem by miracle...

but this would have been to decline the problem

which God had set himself when he created the world,

the problem of expressing his goodness

through the 

total drama

of a world containing free agents,

in spite of, and by means of, 

their rebellion against him."

-c.s lewis

(quotes from "The Problem of Pain" by C.S. Lewis)

not less than everything

these are quotes i wrote down in my moleskin after reading 'A Severe Mercy' by Sheldon Vanauken.

'tormented thought & worn-out shoes/take all & dwell therein'

-julian

to be a christian: 'a condition of complete simplicity/costing not less than everything.'

-c.s. lewis

'thus, rather improbably, began what i must call, judging by all others i've known of, a rather remarkable love. its remarkableness lay, not in our falling quite desperately in love--many have experienced that glory--but in what we made of that love.'

-sheldon vanauken

when the waves turn the minutes to hours

my father used to/still does sing this song whenever the waves begin to pick up on the lake. my mother always quickly hushes him, but we all sit there humming in under our breath. saying these little prayers. looking out over the lake that is so calm and gentle, yet so ruthless and unforgiving. its this level of respect for the water. i couldn't quite explain it when asked recently, but the song always seems to sum it up.


"The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called 'Gitche Gumee'
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty.
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early.
The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ship's bell rang
Could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too,
T'was the witch of November come stealin'.
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the Gales of November came slashin'.
When afternoon came it was freezin' rain
In the face of a hurricane west wind.

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'.
Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya.
At Seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in, he said
Fellas, it's been good t'know ya
The captain wired in he had water comin' in
And the good ship and crew was in peril.
And later that night when his lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searches all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
May have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion.
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams;
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her,
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the Gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral.
The church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call 'Gitche Gumee'.
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early!"

the less i know

"seems like everywhere i go, the more i see the less i know"

isn't that the truth.

ebb and flow

its strange isn't it?

how things come and go.

this tide.

this ebb and flow.

this rise. this fall.

for the past five days, the sun has been excruciating. shining with a warmth that is no longer pleasant, warm, or inviting. but instead. pushing past soft cottons to delicate skin. burning. this source so necessary for life begins to assault life itself. contradiction on the greatest scale.

and then.                   

today.

i slept in. and woke up this morning to a most unusual thing. to the rushing coolness of this summer breeze. the ironic turn of the hot land colliding with lake air and rushing in and down the streets of this sleepy summer town. 

and thats it. right there. the burning, scorching, hungry heat comes. but. so does this cool, rushing wind. 

 

for always is always now.

For we have thought the longer thoughts
And gone the shorter way.
And we have danced to devil's tunes
Shivering home to pray;
I take you now and for always,
For always is always now. 

-Philip Larkin,

'we are far to easily pleased'

thoughts today in quote form:

"God isn't calling you to a mediocre life. And don't you dare settle. DON'T YOU DARE. It's not what you thought it would look like. so what!? When does it ever look like what we think it should or thought it was going to? Never. It never looks like we thought it was going to. God has been making you promises. He is just and faithful to those promises. He did not die on a cross to give you a life full of empty promises and have baked plans. He has a plan, a beautiful, full, abundant path for you!"

-my own words in a letter to a friend [funny how our own words are often preached to ourselves]

"There is no passion to be found in playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."

-Nelson Mandela

"Indeed, if we consider the the unblushing promises of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

-C.S. Lewis [The Weight of Glory]

"for no other reason that that he is himself an extension of life around him"

Just moments ago finished a book that I have loved for many years. My mother gave the book to me about 10 years ago (i've read it several dozen times), trying to satisfy my insatiable appetite for reading and love for nature. The book is written by my hero, Jane Goodall, and is called Reason for Hope. In it, she speaks about her beloved chimpanzees, her love for nature, for people, and life. Among the many wise words she has to say about the deep rooted relationship between spirituality and science, her focus, as it always has been, is on our responsibility now. She describes a lecture she gave at the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. 

"I took, as my text, Genesis Chapter 1, verse 26: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." I explained that many Hebrew scholars believe the word 'dominion' is a very poor translation of the original Hebrew word 'v'yirdu', which actually meant to rule over, as a wise king rules over his subjects, with care and respect. It implied a sense of responsibility and enlightened stewardship."

Stewardship is an uncomfortable world in western vocabulary. Responsibility for the world, the animals, the creation around us. We were given stewardship over creation. Instead, we move about our days recklessly. We pillage the land for its resources. We rape the earth of its wild places. Our planet is increasingly becoming a sad place to live. Our forests are smaller, our land is over farmed and infertile, our livestock are crammed into disgustingly small spaces, our fruit is grown to abnormally large sizes, injected with hormones. Our air becomes increasingly poisonous, we pour toxins into the atmosphere and destroy the layers that protect our very existence. 

There is really no such thing as an environmentalist, as a "tree-hugger", as a "green" person. There are simply those who understand the responsibility of stewardship and have the desire to live. There is simply no reason, that anyone with the desire to live life, cannot carry the weight of stewardship. Buying local produce. Purchasing meat raised and slaughtered humanely, or not at all. Picking up trash. Exploring better ways to do the necessary day-to-day things we do. Its not remarkable. Not even difficult. But necessary. 

Someday, I want my children to play in trees older than myself. I want them to romp in fields of wild flowers. I want them to swim in the lake that runs through my veins. I want to take them on hikes of the wild island I fell in love with as a child. I want them to see a peregrine falcon in its natural habitat. And I want them to wonder. I want them to wonder that even in the midst of our destruction, mankind turned, saw the world, and began to undo what it had done. I want them to wonder at creation and say, "It is good."

"A man who possesses a veneration of life will not simply say his prayers. He will throw himself into the battle to preserve life, if for no other reason than that he is himself an extension of life around him."

-albert schweitzer