Creativity comes in waves...

It must be low tide. Please stay tuned...

11 a.m., Easter Morning, 2008.

There is nothing small or selfish about the reception of a gift. Let all other cliches stand aside, this one is true: it is the thought that counts. The thought of the giver, and the thought of the receiver. This morning Brooke gave me an Easter basket...because she knew that no one else would. There was a thought, and now there is appreciation.

Up until this point, two things have kept me from truly appreciating Easter: Perfection and Magnitude. I simply cannot understand or fathom a perfect Christ. Or more exactly, I cannot empathize or sympathize with the trials and victories of Deity. Was the Atonement and Resurrection hard? Undoubtedly. But He's God. He's It. He's All. There just doesn't seem to be any suspense in the story. Nor character arc. And what about magnitude? A universal gift? An infinite atonement? My mental ken travels out about as far as the nearest cloud in its journey through the expanses. I simply don't know what universal means.

But as Garred drives home this morning, Easter basket perched next to him on the passenger seat, a miracle feathers itself into his mind. The Mighty God, Creator of creation, for two moments in time (one 2000 years ago, one at this very point in spacetime) was simply Jesus. My Jesus. A skinny man who put together an epiphanal Easter basket for me while still in the tomb and traveled through 2000 years of History to deliver it to me precisely as I'm passing Ikea on I-15. Here are the contents of my basket:

- One realization that the Atonement was Hell. Literally Hell. When Christ saw me that night in Gethsemane, he saw a boy not worth saving. He saw an animal. A hate. A lust. A lie. A blasphemy. A devil. He saw it in you, too. It broke Jesus' heart. My Jesus. It was enough to make his royal blood flee from the same frame that housed these ungodly pictures. What happened that night was uglier than you and I will ever have to know.

- One realization that the same Christ that suffered for the world was the very Jesus that had nothing but love and benevolence for me after the Resurrection. He thought of me, he smiled, and now there is appreciation.

- One reminder to slow down before I passed a cop hidden behind the median.

JM Barrie would have put it this way: Every ray of light that shone off of our Savior's face that first Easter morning was a happy thought or a hopeful prayer about me and you. Whatever darkness that had perpetrated His soul a few nights previous was answered Sunday with a smile, a glimmer, a happy light. Easter brings Spring. Winter is over.

I don't understand the infinite atonement. But I am moved this morning to know that someone (my Jesus) was thinking about me.

What if you peaked at 3?

Life...at 3 years old. Tuxedos, flashing lights, beautiful women (my mom), limousines, pumpkin-pie haircuts. What if your entire life was a denouement? If the only thing you had to live for was another day slightly less remarkable than the last? Welcome to "This Old Life." I'm your host, Garred Lentz.

Poem

I kid you not - I wrote this in my dream last night.


She never put up with my reading.
'You wear your books like a badge.'
Wilderness Safety. Personal Finance. Ulysses. Proust.
'Nobody knows what the hell Joyce was talking about, anyway.'
She was right. On both accounts.
But I cry when I read Dostoevsky.
She's been gone a few weeks. Or a month. Or a year.
It doesn't really matter because I've forgotten her face.
And her name is a word.
And her something is nothing.
And not even straw blows through the empty barn.
But I cry when I read Dostoevsky.

Sunday Message - cradle

The first story I ever remember writing was about a boy who became an astronaut and then turned into a star. The first short story I wrote in high school was about an old man fishing in a pond trying to catch the bobbing reflections of the night sky. And the first personal essay I wrote in college was about a spiritual epiphany I had while following the Milky Way on a dusty Ecuadorian road.

If I ever publish a book, you can bet the nighttime expanse will be prominently featured.

I don't know what it is about the heavens that so distracts my subconscience. I mean rarely do I purposely think about the stars and the blackness in between, but it seems that every time I put pen to paper my thoughts automatically reach upwards. I suppose it's akin to coastal people writing and thinking about water. As I consider it, many of my fondest childhood memories come from the back seat of our family car. On long drives home from who-knows-where I would lay in the back seat and stare out the window into the heavens until I fell asleep (or pretended to fall asleep so that my mother would carry me into the house). It was as if the arm of our Milky Way somehow held and rocked me in the darkness.

I remember the first time I noticed that my Cradling Galaxy was missing from the sky. It was the Fourth of July. My parents had divorced several years earlier and I was just starting to notice the strangeness of their relationship. Deep inside my stomach swelled a murky green storm as I watched my father try to light a firework, fail, get advice from my mother, mutter something under his breath, and hand the unlit menace over to her in an overly macho way. It was, quite remarkably, the first time I realized that they didn't love each other. I was 8 or 9.

That night I slept on the lawn with my older brothers and sister. They fell asleep almost immediately and I was left to shoulder what I believed to be an infinitely unfair and lonesome burden. For in my mind, I believed that I was the only one, youngest though I was, to come to this loveless realization. And it was too cruel and the storm was too green for me to ever share the news. I was 8 years old. And I was scared. I was 28-year-old scared. I was 87-year-old scared. I was 3-month-old scared. And as my eyes instinctively looked upwards, I cried. My starry mothering arm had melted away into a big-city sky. There were a few mocking stars. And the sound of my sobs. I was alone. I 8-year-old cried.

Oh Ellie, please don't ever turn 8. But you will. You will probably turn 8 when you're just 5 or 6. You will turn 8 before I know what to do. My baby bear cub, my angel, please remember this: God is forever. And God is love.

One Golden Month

There was a time when everything was spiritual. When everyone I knew spoke of God. When every conversation involved service and love and the Lord. For one month before my mission, I lived in Eden.

Out of some random need for affirmation or reminiscence, I decided to open up a shoebox full of old letters and dive in tonight. And what I found was a city of God. All of my very best friends decided to tell me they loved me. Kathy was a miracle. Emily was an angel. Andy and Jake and Ross and Carson were sincere for a sliver in time. A bunch of rag tag 18-year-olds got together and spoke of love and testified of Jesus. Missions are a miracle before they even happen.

It's time for a spiritual renaissance again. Everyone within earshot of this blog: start over. Go back to those golden months when you or your friends were preparing for missions. Not to those holier-than-thou months after you got home, but to those innocent and bumbling and humbling months when friends could say "I love you" and "I believe" and "I'm scared." When the idea of missing someone somehow brought out a newly mature joy and yearning. When high school was the past, and God was the future. Get out your old letters and pictures and tapes. Listen to your farewells. We had no idea what we were doing, but we were full of hope. And 10 years later we still have no idea what we're doing. We might as well bring the hope back.

She's a headache... She's an angel... She's a girl... How do you solve a problem like Maria?

I'm looking for a girl that can't stop singing.