I’m proud of it

I talk in my sleep. Some of the things that proceed from my unconscious are baffling. Others are a boiled-down, essence of my way. I am not sure if that is the best way to say it. I was considering saying an essence of me, but I am not sure if that is accurate either.

One of these “others” was a time that I was sleeping on the floor next to my wife. She was sleeping on an air mattress. I banged my hand on the edge of the air mattress, two sets of three times. My wife said, “What are you doing?” Then I said, “I am showing you that I love you." (Paused for 4-5 seconds) "Sorry if it’s obnoxious.”

I have no recollection of this event.

This Conundrum

My name is inconsistent. I am related to grass. The ebb and flow, the undulation of thin, almost white fibers tell a story. This mixture of tubes and long narrow leaves, scratch a portrait of me into the air. Any force causes the stylus to make another invisible mark. The wind or a squirrel moves me. The weight of the dead crushes me, that is, dead branches.

The grass has a neighbor that is a rock. He says he’s granite, but I think he’s sandstone. He brags that nothing can move him, nothing but large powerful forces. “Untold number of years would be required to wear me down,” he says. “You wont last a season. Send fire my way I don’t care. How would you like a good blaze?”

“My roots can burrow into your cracks and make pieces of you,” says grass. “But you are right. I am no rock. Like they say, the grass of the field is here one day and gone the next. How can I become more consistent?”

“I don’t know,” says rock. “You get pushed around by the wind, but you still make seeds. You even use the wind that pushes you around to disperse your seeds.”

“That is true,” says grass. “ I guess, when I get pushed around so much and feel so dependent on the weather, the soil, and the rest of my environment, I feel less valuable, less important.”

“Well, check this out, grass. I might not be easily moved or changed, but I don’t do anything, I don’t make seeds or grow or mature.”

“You do help with soil erosion so that I can grow.”

“Thanks, grass.”

“No, thank you rock. I just needed some outside perspective.”

The stories of my scars.

Do, do, do, la, la, la, la, do, do. As the world has spun on its slant axis, many odd objects have found themselves in violent encounter with my largest organ, these are The Stories of My Scars.

My Other Tattoo

I think that some people have secrets in their past that might shock their current friends. This is not one of those stories.

I have a beautiful stomach. So, I like to show it off. No wait, this is not how this story goes. I don’t think these things.

Okay, my younger brother (who guest wrote on this blog) was doing homework. It might have been calculus or physics. He had a mechanical pencil. It was a special pencil that I wasn’t allowed to use, his homework pencil.

One day for absolutely no reason he asked me if he could throw it at me like a spear. I thought why not, what could happen. As the pencil was gliding through the air that separated us, I stood still. “It will just bounce off,” so I thought. It did bounce off. But I felt a stronger pain than what was expected. Lifting my shirt I found pencil “lead” sticking out about an eighth of an inch. When I tried to extract it, I failed. It was really stuck. When it was finally removed it had a total length of perhaps a quarter of an inch.

I still bear the nearly imperceptible scar, darkened with graphite. I have to shave my stomach to see it clearly, which I do on the occasion because my stomach is so nice. What am I writing?

The stories of my scars.

Do, do, do, la, la, la, la, do, do. As the world has spun on its slant axis, many odd objects have found themselves in violent encounter with my largest organ, these are The Stories of My Scars.

I guess you’d say that I do have a tattoo. Or as the cool kids would say, “I have a tat.”

Okay this is way off topic but it was very funny. My brother and friend Aaron were listening to a Christian radio station late at night. The DJ sounded like he was related to Barry White with not such a deep voice but very wispy. He was talking about something where he said, “dude with a tude.” Then he proceeded to explain, incase his listeners didn’t get it, that “a dude is a guy and a tude is an attitude.”

So my tat is from the hard days of grade school. I think that it was third grade. These were the days of the number 2 pencil, or as I learned to call it, the number 2 weapon. Our classrooms were amply equipped with sharpeners that could give a pencil a skin piercing sharpness.

My class was divided by the cool kids that had Yikes pencils, the girls that had Lisa Frank pencil boxes and the other kids. Then there were kids like me who would use broken Yikes pencils we found on the playground.

One ill fated day came upon us. I think I was returning from sharpening my pencil. A boy who was called Dillon walked by me. Ow. His pencil plunged into the flesh of my palm. I still bare the mark of this confrontation.

a walk to forget

The morning was cool. Green and yellow leaves, spotted with brown, littered the grass. I found that walking on fallen black walnuts unexpectedly can feel very strange, or even turn an ankle. My toes were getting damp and cold from the morning dew. I was beginning to wish that I had worn something other than my cotton canvas shoes. I kicked vainly to get the leaves unstuck from my shoe. No matter, more leaves knocked it off and replaced it.

The bark on these black walnut trees sure was attractive. Wet, deep dark, pure dark were some adjectives that came to mind. My toes were getting too cold. So I went back inside.

This is a work of plausible fiction.

The stories of my scars.

Do, do, do, la, la, la, la, do, do. As the world has spun on its slant axis, many odd objects have found themselves in violent encounter with my largest organ, these are The Stories of My Scars.

Some lessons you only have to learn once, some you have to learn again and again.

I have had many personal rules, rules that I have imposed on myself for one reason or another.

I would make a game out of rules such as, I can only step one foot in each square on a sidewalk. I had a rule that I could only eat one bite of my birthday candy bar a day to make it last as long as possible.

One rule was that if I was using a circular saw to cut wood I had to wait to set it down until the blade had finished spinning. My dad told me of people who would set the saw on their thigh after a cut to give their arms a break. This is potentially very dangerous because the blade guard could stick in the up position, my dad explained.

At one point this particular rule became amended. I was using a portable hand planer. It will trim off the surface of a board and is meant to make fairly shallow cuts. It has three straight blades that are attached to a cylinder shape.

I was shaping a hand drum with it. This style of hand drum has straight tapering sides. I had been using the planer for some time and was worried that it might be over heating. I turned off the motor. I placed my left hand on the side to feel it. My left ring finger slipped just under the motor and into the spinning blades.

The emotional shock of trying to be responsible, considerate, safe, then finding my self at the mercy of a bloody mistake of only seconds and inches was almost the worst of it. This was a mistake. If I had only waited a few seconds until the blades stopped spinning, or had I not let my finger get so close... The worst of it wasn’t the pain, it didn’t hurt that badly. It was the embarrassment of making the mistake and the fear of being forced to own up to it with a trip to the emergency room and pay for the mistake with the price of the ER.

It didn’t shave my skin off in a wide area. The corner of the blades dug in deep. Most of my cuts up until this point had a flap of skin of some sort that I could close to help stop the bleeding. This one didn’t. I remember covering it with band aid, then with folded toilet paper, all wrapped in tape. It bleed through. Then I was worried that someone would see that it had bleed through and take me to the ER. So I change that bandage. This time it didn’t bleed through.

Now my rule is to freeze until the blade stops spinning. I don't always obey.

It’s all about...

I hear folks (Christian pastors, singers, others) say “It’s all about Jesus.” I know that such a generic statement is often tied to a very relevant context that brings it complete legitimacy. Other times or, to my recollection, many times this statement is flung into public hearing without a context. I think that people have a general posture of wanting to adore Jesus with a potent overarching statement. I think that people sometimes desire a phrase or idea that they can latch onto and use without the trouble of discerning whether it is appropriate or not. I find that a catchphrase such as this is assigned to contexts which render the phrase untrue.

To say “It’s all about Jesus,” without context is untrue. The word “it” has to refer to something. I think that the general assumption is that the Christian life is the subject of this sentence. I believe that to say that the Christian life is all about Jesus is simply not true. I find that there are many other things that make up the Christian life. Some examples are the world, sin, the other members of the trinity.

To say that worship is all about Jesus is, in my view incorrect. I think this was claimed in a popular worship song. I believe that worship is about Jesus, God as one, the Father, believers who offer worship, and other things.

To even say that Jesus is all about Jesus is untrue. He seemed to be all about the Father, if anything. But he also seemed to be all about sinners too.

What harm does this bring? I don’t know exactly. But, I believe that truth and accuracy are important. I advocate strongly for authoring one’s statements and claims. I believe that in all aspects of life one should assess and reassess what one is saying, doing, believing and the motivation behind these aspects of living.

Part of my belief in the importance of accuracy is the effect that it has on Christian witness. When I see Christians going around making inaccurate claims, many are found on Church signs, it makes Christians look unintelligent. (A quick disclaimer: I am not saying that I do this always. I am only saying that I believe it to be important.)