Day 10: Life is a Tree

Ever notice how life is a lot like a tree? It grounds itself deep in the earth, supported by the work of countless roots that can never be easily seen without digging up the entire tree. Like our families and those who influence us, support us and sustain us. Those who have come before us who unknowingly shaped our consciousness by their countless decisions passed down in the genetic code to help make us who we are and who we will become.

The trunk leaves the ground solid and strong and yearns for the sky, seeking the closest path to the light. Few branches leave the trunk low to the ground, much as in our childhood our choices were limited yet we had no care. The only thing that dominates our thoughts as children is reaching upward, reaching for the sky and the light and all that is to come, all we cannot perceive yet sense just beyond the horizon of our being.

As we enter into adulthood, we reach the first branches of our life and they are mighty ones with many additional branches in each direction. Their choices take us in many directions but the light is still somewhat obscured by the higher branches. We begin to catch glimpses of the sky and sun and we race ever more quickly toward the edges, the outskirts of our being, testing the strength of our trunk and the limits of our existence.

We enter middle age and find our branches growing shorter and fewer, yet the choices seem much more clear. We feel so much nearer the sky now and we can begin to make out the form of the sun quite well. We can look down at the ground and realize how high we've risen and it can be frightening at moments, especially as the wind begins to sway our trunk, grown now somewhat thinner. We begin to perceive the dangers we never believe on the lower branches. Still, the heights call and we must continue toward the light.

Toward the top of the tree, branches are very short and few, like our choices. But at those heights, the sky comes fully into view and the sun graces us with abundant life. The wind sways us, sometimes wildly, but we have such a marvelous view of all that is around us. We can see the entirety of our life stretching out below us and recognize the results of those many decisions. The climb can be weary, though, and we must content ourselves in ourselves recognizing it's far too difficult to climb back down the tree. Much easier to jump into the heavens.

Yet at every point, we are still that tree. Just something I was thinking about today.

Day 9: George MacDonald

I pulled out some of my old George MacDonald books today and was once again struck with his insight and brilliance. It's no wonder C.S. Lewis referred to him as his "master", a mentor he only once met. MacDonald influenced an entire generation of writers and certainly has had a phenomenal influence on me. I decided to post here for you his introductory essay, "The Fantastic Imagination". This essay on the nature of art and imagination and the fairytale has been like a plumbline for me in many of my writings. I hope it inspires you as it has always inspired me. Bless!

The Fantastic Imagination

by George MacDonald

Introduction from The Light Princess and other Fairy Tales, also reprinted in a Dish of Orts.

That we have in English no word corresponding to the German Märchen, drives us to use the word Fairytale, regardless of the fact that the tale may have nothing to do with any sort of fairy. The old use of the word Fairy, by Spenser at least, might, however, well be adduced, were justification or excuse necessary where need must.

Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale; then read this and that as well, and you will see what is a fairytale. Were I further begged to describe the fairytale, or define what it is, I would make answer, that I should as soon think of describing the abstract human face, or stating what must go to constitute a human being. A fairytale is just a fairytale, as a face is just a face; and of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful.

Many a man, however, who would not attempt to define a man, might venture to say something as to what a man ought to be: even so much I will not in this place venture with regard to the fairytale, for my long past work in that kind might but poorly instance or illustrate my now more matured judgment. I will but say some things helpful to the reading, in right-minded fashion, of such fairytales as I would wish to write, or care to read.

Some thinkers would feel sorely hampered if at liberty to use no forms but such as existed in nature, or to invent nothing save in accordance with the laws of the world of the senses; but it must not therefore be imagined that they desire escape from the region of law. Nothing lawless can show the least reason why it should exist, or could at best have more than an appearance of life.

The natural world has its laws, and no man must interfere with them in the way of presentment any more than in the way of use; but they themselves may suggest laws of other kinds, and man may, if he pleases, invent a little world of his own, with its own laws; for there is that in him which delights in calling up new forms--which is the nearest, perhaps, he can come to creation. When such forms are new embodiments of old truths, we call them products of the Imagination; when they are mere inventions, however lovely, I should call them the work of the Fancy: in either case, Law has been diligently at work.

His world once invented, the highest law that comes next into play is, that there shall be harmony between the laws by which the new world has begun to exist; and in the process of his creation, the inventor must hold by those laws. The moment he forgets one of them, he makes the story, by its own postulates, incredible. To be able to live a moment in an imagined world, we must see the laws of its existence obeyed. Those broken, we fall out of it. The imagination in us, whose exercise is essential to the most temporary submission to the imagination of another, immediately, with the disappearance of Law, ceases to act. Suppose the gracious creatures of some childlike region of Fairyland talking either cockney or Gascon! Would not the tale, however lovelily begun, sink once to the level of the Burlesque--of all forms of literature the least worthy? A man's inventions may be stupid or clever, but if he does not hold by the laws of them, or if he makes one law jar with another, he contradicts himself as an inventor, he is no artist. He does not rightly consort his instruments, or he tunes them in different keys. The mind of man is the product of live Law; it thinks by law, it dwells in the midst of law, it gathers from law its growth; with law, therefore, can it alone work to any result. Inharmonious, unconsorting ideas will come to a man, but if he try to use one of such, his work will grow dull, and he will drop it from mere lack of interest. Law is the soil in which alone beauty will grow; beauty is the only stuff in which Truth can be clothed; and you may, if you will, call Imagination the tailor that cuts her garments to fit her, and Fancy his journeyman that puts the pieces of them together, or perhaps at most embroiders their button-holes. Obeying law, the maker works like his creator; not obeying law, he is such a fool as heaps a pile of stones and calls it a church.

In the moral world it is different: there a man may clothe in new forms, and for this employ his imagination freely, but he must invent nothing. He may not, for any purpose, turn its laws upside down. He must not meddle with the relations of live souls. The laws of the spirit of man must hold, alike in this world and in any world he may invent. It were no offence to suppose a world in which everything repelled instead of attracted the things around it; it would be wicked to write a tale representing a man it called good as always doing bad things, or a man it called bad as always doing good things: the notion itself is absolutely lawless. In physical things a man may invent; in moral things he must obey--and take their laws with him into his invented world as well.

"You write as if a fairytale were a thing of importance: must it have meaning?"

It cannot help having some meaning; if it have proportion and harmony it has vitality, and vitality is truth. The beauty may be plainer in it than the truth, but without the truth the beauty could not be, and the fairytale would give no delight. Everyone, however, who feels the story, will read its meaning after his own nature and development: one man will read one meaning in it, another will read another.

"If so, how am I to assure myself that I am not reading my own meaning into it, but yours out of it?"

Why should you be so assured? It may be better that you should read your meaning into it. That may be a higher operation of your intellect than the mere reading of mine out of it: your meaning may be superior to mine.

"Suppose my child ask me what the fairytale means, what am I to say?"

If you do not know what it means, what is easier than to say so? If you do see a meaning in it, there it is for you to give him. A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much. At all events, the business of the painter is not to teach zoology.

But indeed your children are not likely to trouble you about the meaning. They find what they are capable of finding, and more would be too much. For my part, I do not write for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.

A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it not an allegory. He must be an artist indeed who can, in any mode, produce a strict allegory that is not a weariness to the spirit. An allegory must be Mastery or Moorditch.

A fairytale, like a butterfly or a bee, helps itself on all sides, sips every wholesome flower, and spoils not one. The true fairytale is, to my mind, very like the sonata. We all know that a sonata means something; and where there is the faculty of talking with suitable vagueness, and choosing metaphor sufficiently loose, mind may approach mind, in the interpretation of a sonata, with the result of a more or less contenting consciousness of sympathy. But if two or three men sat down to write each what the sonata meant to him, what approximation to definite idea would be the result? Little enough--and that little more than needful. We should find it had roused related, if not identical, feelings, but probably not one common thought. Has the sonata therefore failed? Had it undertaken to convey, or ought it to be expected to impart anything defined, anything notionally recognisable?

"But words are not music; words at least are meant and fitted to carry a precise meaning!"

It is very seldom indeed that they carry the exact meaning of any user of them! And if they can be so used as to convey definite meaning, it does not follow that they ought never to carry anything else. Words are live things that may be variously employed to various ends. They can convey a scientific fact, or throw a shadow of her child's dream on the heart of a mother. They are things to put together like the pieces of dissected map, or to arrange like the notes on a stave. Is the music in them to go for nothing? It can hardly help the definiteness of a meaning: is it therefore to be disregarded? They have length, and breadth, and outline: have they nothing to do with depth? Have they only to describe, never to impress? Has nothing any claim to their use but definite? The cause of a child's tears may be altogether undefinable: has the mother therefore no antidote for his vague misery? That may be strong in colour which has no evident outline. A fairtytale, a sonata, a gathering storm, a limitless night, seizes you and sweeps you away: do you begin at once to wrestle with it and ask whence its power over you, whither it is carrying you? The law of each is in the mind of its composer; that law makes one man feel this way, another man feel that way. To one the sonata is a world of odour and beauty, to another of soothing only and sweetness. To one, the cloudy rendezvous is a wild dance, with a terror at its heart; to another, a majestic march of heavenly hosts, with Truth in their centre pointing their course, but as yet restraining her voice. The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.

I will go farther.--The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is--not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods in which thoughts of high import arise. Does any aspect of Nature wake but one thought? Does she ever suggest only one definite thing? Does she make any two men in the same place at the same moment think the same thing? Is she therefore a failure, because she is not definite? Is it nothing that she rouses the something deeper than the understanding--the power that underlies thoughts? Does she not set feeling, and so thinking at work? Would it be better that she did this after one fashion and not after many fashions? Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking: such ought the sonata, such ought the fairytale to be.

"But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!"

Not what he pleases, but what he can. If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out of the best; we need not mind how he treats any work of art! If he be a true man, he will imagine true things; what matter whether I meant them or not? They are there none the less that I cannot claim putting them there! One difference between God's work and man's is, that, while God's work cannot mean more than he meant, man's must mean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there is a layer upon layer of ascending significance; also he expresses the same thought in higher and higher kinds of that thought: it is God's things, his embodied thoughts, which alone a man has to use, modified and adapted to his own purposes, for the expression of his thoughts; therefore he cannot help his words and figures falling into such combinations in the mind of another as he had himself not foreseen, so many are the thoughts allied to every other thought, so many are the relations involved in every figure, so many the facts hinted in every symbol. A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time things that came from thoughts beyond his own.

"But surely you would explain your idea to one who asked you?"

I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE under what I foolishly meant for one. Any key to a work of imagination would be nearly, if not quite, as absurd. The tale is there not to hide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open your door to it; leave it out in the cold. To ask me to explain, is to say, "Roses! Boil them, or we won't have them!" My tales may not be roses but I will not boil them.

So long as I think my dog can bark, I will not sit up to bark for him.

If a writer's aim be logical conviction, he must spare no logical pains, not merely to be understood, but to escape being misunderstood; where his object is to move by suggestion, to cause to imagine, then let him assail the soul of his reader as the wind assails an aeolian harp. If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. Let fairytale of mine go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flash again. Caught in a hand which does not love its kind, it will turn to an insignificant ugly thing, that can neither flash nor fly.

The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose sake it exists. We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must--he cannot help himself--become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed.

If any strain of my "broken music" make a child's eyes flash, or his mother's grow for a moment dim, my labour will not have been in vain.

THE END

Day 8: Label Me This, Label Me That

(I wrote this for one of my classes, but I felt compelled to share it here and hope it might elicit a response from those of you who should dare to read it. Comments are welcome. I wrote this not so much to answer questions but to perhaps pose new ones and hope that someone might be challenged in them to find truth for themselves. It is my most sincere hope that this insignificant essay be not a statement but an initiation of dialogue. Bless, y'all!)

What is man without his labels? It seems everywhere one turns in modern culture there is a new label or categorization employed to describe some aspect of a person’s identity. Modern psychology seems especially dedicated to the systematic classification and categorization of virtually every single thought pattern imaginable, aberrant or not. When I was growing up, a hyper kid who talked in class and seemed to have far more energy than they could possibly ever expend was just a kid with excess energy. Now, they suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder, ADD, or its more aggressive twin, Attention Deficit Hyper Disorder, ADHD. All of which has me wondering what came first: the disorder or the label? Labels comfort most people. They give a sense of belonging, an explanation for their own nature, a way of describing self. Yet to what extent does the label influence or even form self-identity? If a parent labels a child as ADD from an early age, will that child grow into the identity of ADD, or was the label merely giving a classification to what was already present within the self of the child? To answer these questions there must first exist a clear understanding of what the self, what identity, truly is and what extent language affects the formation and alteration of self identity. There must also be answered the question of whether or not this identity, the self, can be controlled, altered, and manipulated in any form. Can a person externally influence the self of another person? Can a person control, even change, self, their own identity? If language does influence identity and the self can be controlled by internal or external forces, then it would seem clear that labeling and self-categorization have formative effects on the identity of a person. In short, words can change who we are, or at least who we believe ourselves to be.

The nature of identity itself defies conventional categorization and definition. Psychologists and philosophers wage great wars and crusades to pin down the nature of identity and there has yet to be any consensus within those communities. Man struggles to give voice to his own essence, his being. This difficulty defining identity perhaps should give some inclination as to whether or not identity itself is directly influenced by language. If language cannot yet give a concrete explanation of what makes a person unique, why should anyone expect they could use language to explain themselves? Perhaps the true problem centers on the complex and often fluid nature of identity as opposed to the relatively less abstract nature of language.

Social Identity Theory in psychology teaches that identity is wrapped up tightly in socialization and group interaction. Any social group to which one feels a sense of belonging will mold an individual’s identity, creating a multi-faceted and highly complex reflection of the various social interactions of the individual. For example, if the individual joins a political group that defines itself as a liberal group, that individual will tend to begin to identify themselves as being politically liberal. Further, that individual will likely find a specific role identity within that group, typically by fulfilling some perceived need within the group or by applying their own perceived gifts and abilities toward some goal common to the group. This role identity helps solidify a sense of belonging within that group and further reinforces their identity with those other members of the political group. Yet a person’s role identity often changes within a group over an extended period of time. Role identities also vary greatly from one social group to another as can the language used to label those identities within each group.

How can a single word, a label, possibly hope to describe the many subtle nuances of an individual identity? I do not believe it ever can. This then raises yet another question: if a label can not adequately describe identity, why do we use them? From my own experiences and research, there seem to be two compelling answers. People frequently employ identity labels to aid communication of self amongst those who have little or no existing knowledge of, or relationship with them. These labels also control personal perception of the identity of both self and others.

In one of the top grossing movies of 1998, You've Got Mail, the Joe Fox character, played by Tom Hanks, makes a poignant revelation of modern life. He lucidly observes, “The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino. “ For all the advances in communication and the myriad new decisions we are faced with every day in modern society, we have become less equipped to communicate and less able to make decisions. We live in a culture that keeps us too busy to develop organic relationships. The result is the capsulizing of identity into key words we can quickly describe to another person. We cut to the chase to determine whether we perceive the relationship is even worth investing time and energy to cultivate, believing our time to be severely limited by the numerous demands of modern life. In the process, we run the constant risk of misinterpreting each other’s identities due to differences in the way we interpret each other’s language.

When do we become so submerged into our role identities that we actually miss an opportunity for an important personal connection with another individual? In You've Got Mail, the Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly characters spend most of the movie encountering each other in their social role identities, where they distrust and dislike each other, while simultaneously, and unwittingly, developing a very strong personal connection with each other on-line through email. Presumably, they bare more of their true self to one another outside the restrictions of their social role identities and find they actually have much in common, eventually developing a strong attraction and even love for one another. This narrative exposes a strange contradiction in the interaction between language and identity. The same person expressing themselves through language in their social role identity creates a very different perception than when they are expressing themselves through language via email, outside their social role identity. According to boxofficemojo.com, the movie grossed over $250 million worldwide, clearly touching on a subject easily identifiable to a wide audience. Could it be that our modern lives have become so dominated by socialization and role-based identities that we have lost our sense of self? Have we lost our ability to know ourselves beyond how we are known by others in our social groups? A quick search on Google of the term “personality test” would indicate the answer is yes. There are hundreds of different tests designed by men and women with numerous credentials for one purpose: to help you know who you are. Take the test, get your label, know yourself.

As often appears the case with identity, investigation into its nature creates more questions than answers. Perhaps that is the entire point. Identity may not be the destination at all. Identity may be the life-long journey of self-discovery, a process that ends only in death, and perhaps not even then. Whether we create labels to explain our identity or our identities mold themselves to the labels we give ourselves and others, one thing is clear: humans hate to be alone. If there were no other people to interact with and express ourselves to, then we would have no use for labels. Humans desire labels and role identities because they help give a sense of belonging. Labels provide a fast method of expressing self to others in a modern world where there is often little time allowed for the slow development of relationship and intimate interpersonal knowledge.

Day 7: Supreme Court Victory?

All my news feeds are chiming today with the news of the recent Supreme Court decision regarding "partial-birth abortions". If you haven't heard, the Supreme Court ruled today 5-4 to restrict late-term abortion procedures, specifically the procedures where the baby is partially delivered and immediately killed by crushing its skull. There are far more details involved and I'd suggest anyone interested to read the actual case and ruling, or at least some of the articles written about it. The Court ruled that the states did have a legitimate interest in preserving and promoting fetal life.

I read anti-abortion activist after activist claiming such a great victory at the news of the ruling. But don't ask me to be entirely thrilled at this "victory". Oh, no. Look, I believe in Jesus and I believe that life begins far before birth or even conception. Life begins outside of all our concepts of time. I truly think that abortion is sickening. But this ruling affects only a tiny percentage of actual abortions yearly in the United States. And here's the greater anger stirred in me: this means more money diverted into lobbying and bringing untold numbers of suits against various individuals, states, governments, etc. In other words, the Christian right, now emboldened by this victory, is going to sink untold millions, if not billions, of dollars on lawyers and politicians with the hopes of passing more stringent anti-abortion laws and pressing the issue further with the courts by filing countless suits.

That really pisses me off.

When is the religious community going to learn that it's impossible to legislate morality? Did prohibition reduce alcoholism in this country? Not significantly, and it increased crime and gave organized mafia syndicates a foothold in America they haven't yet relinquished.

The only thing that's going to turn the tide of abortion in this country is changing way we treat these mothers in the community and changing the hearts of the mothers who are considering abortion. I can't even imagine the mental, spiritual, and emotional anguish that goes along with that type of decision. But I've known some women who have, and I've seen some of the emotional and spiritual damage their decisions have brought. One was my own mother who aborted my older brother or sister some five years before I was conceived. The reason was simple, she believed she would be outcast by her family and society and she believed she had no other real choice. She believed she wouldn't be able to properly support a child. From my own personal research, this is the most common situation young women find themselves in when they're considering aborting. Societal and familial outcast coupled with economic fears.

Does anyone out there really believe that passing a law is going to change those factors? Do you really believe that passing a law is going to stop abortion? Really? I'm sorry, I don't. Case in point, my own mother. She had her abortion over a year before the Roe v. Wade decision. When the doctor told her she was pregnant, she replied that she couldn't have a baby right now, somewhat in shock. Do you know what his response was? He calmly made an appointment for her to see another doctor who would perform the abortion for her. Within a week, it was done, and with clinical precision. And all that time it was completely against the law!

Why does the religious community continue to sink untold millions and billions of dollars into fighting a 35 year losing legal battle?!?!?! WHY!!!! Can someone please give me an answer that makes even the least bit of sense? Can someone please tell me why we can't use that money to build shelters, adoption agencies, free OB/GYN clinics, provide first-class prenatal care for free, provide educational resources for free, college scholarships for free, day-care for single mothers for free???? The list goes on and on. Why must we continue to ostracize these women from our communities? (As an aside, I understand many churches are doing many of the above things and I applaud them for their efforts.)

Those of us who are against abortion should be the ultimate pro-choicers, we should be giving women all kinds of choices in addition to abortion. But instead we continue to spend millions and billions of dollars in a vain attempt to prevent women from doing something most of them don't really want to do in the first place! We march and we waive banners, and babies die. What kind of love is that? What kind of love gladly gives money, time, and support to a lawyer instead of a pregnant mother who thinks she's out of options? Shouldn't we really be spending more of our time, money, and support on the mother who's going to have to make the ultimate decision? I mean, shouldn't we be doing that anyway? Isn't that what loving our neighbors requires us to do?

I'm sick and tired of the admission of defeat by the religious community in America. That's what anti-abortion legislation truly is. It's an admission that they're no longer able to reach the hearts and minds of young women in America. It's an admission that there's no longer unconditional love within the churches of America. It's an admission that we can't love our own neighbors, so we better get the government to stop them from doing something we find offensive and wrong. Before you go out and march for anti-abortion, go ask your pastor or elder how much of your church's money has been spent to start a women's shelter, to provide free health care for single mothers, to provide daycare for single mothers, or scholarships for single mothers to complete their degrees. Then ask them how much money has been sent to some lawyer or action group in Washington, or your local state capital so they can lobby for anti-abortion legislation. Their answers just might shock you into sobriety.

Then ask yourself, how do you think Jesus would handle the situation? Would he give his time and resources to changing the laws of the government of the land, or would he spend his time loving and attending to the needs of the women who have run out of options? If you can answer those questions honestly and still feel good about going out and marching, then by all means go for it, let your voice be heard. But don't ask me to consider today's "victory" anything but an admission of absolute failure on the part of the Church in America. We've failed to do our job, we've failed to love, so now we demand the government to do it for us. But governments don't know how to love, all they know how to do is restrict and enforce, and all that breeds is resentment.

I serve a God who gave us all absolute choice, free will. It's interesting how so many who come in His name seem to be determined to restrict that choice, as if they knew better than God. What arrogance we've shown the world. Let's try to reach some hearts in love before we go demanding obedience in law. Pray that God will change hearts, not laws.

Day 6: Life Intervenes

Well, so much for my original plan of writing every single day for 30 days starting on my birthday. Ha, I didn't even make it a solid week before life intervened. Over the past week and change I've had a ton of work, massive amounts of reading, and a few papers for school that needed my attention. I didn't even manage to make it down to Los Angeles despite having an entire week off for Spring Break. C'est la vie, best laid plans, and all that rot.

Fortunately, the tide of work is ebbing and I'm finally able to re-devote myself to writing my blogs. I have several things I want to discuss and lay down, several questions that need to be asked. They're troublesome questions, perhaps some might even consider them dangerous. But they've been dominating some of my thoughts for the past few months. In some cases, years. I have my own thoughts on what the answers might be, but that's really not the point. The point is that the questions, although dangerous, are valid, and I've decided it's time they be asked.

I will leave you with the first of the questions I've been wrestling with: is God revealed by creation? In other words, can we learn anything about God through observing the natural universe?

Day 5: Why I love the night

Like a gentle lover, night calls upon me again. She knows no hurries, her ways are patient. Quiet and slow she creeps upon me with fluid grace. Scarcely do I realize she comes before she takes me full into her arms, stealing me away from her brother day. Twinkling gems set in heaven's velvet gown shine at her arrival. No longer banished by Sol's jealous monopoly, they dance for us their stately minuet across the sky, their steps fixed in antiquity. Luna graces us with a smile, her cheshire grin caught firm in her brother's gaze. Night's voice is calm and quiet, a whispered breath drawn close to the ear where none should overhear. She does not fear silence but welcomes its intimate embrace. Never insisting on my attention, she leaves me space for my thoughts. Yet always she's there to listen whenever I should need to talk. When my cares overwhelm me, she hides away my tears. Its her song sung in stillness that sends me quick to sleep. I wish to hold her near me longer than her stay. And though each morn she leaves me, she never fails her vow to return.

Day 4: Connections to the past

I've never embraced the past. Not precisely sure why. I know my heritage, I've researched my Norse ancestry as several of those close to me can attest. I'm even known as the Norseman to a few, several years ago I even looked the part with long hair, beard, and braids. I miss my braids, but that's another blog. But all those things, my ancestry and such, are very archetypal. What I mean is that I've never really had any connection to the recent past, mine or my family's.

The past, for me, has always been just that: the past. Historical reference. It's simply not where I live. I live now, but now is a very long time because, in all reality, now is no time. There's an old truism, "There's no time like the present." But I like to flip it around and realize that in the present, there's no time. The word present comes from the Latin prae, an adverb or preposition which means "before" or "in front" and esse, the infinitive form of the verb sum, "to be". Literally to be before. Another way of saying it would be to say "the existence in front of you." To be now! Okay, I've gotten onto a tangent. Got so many rabbit trails in my mind, it's hard to keep from falling in sometimes. Let's see, retrace and retry.

So I don't live in the past, never really have. I have few things that connect me with my own past, and few friends who've known me long enough to ground me to my roots. And as for family, well, I've lived most of my life a long ways away from them and know them more distantly than most of my friends. Even photos of me as a child are few and far between. Few were taken and many that were have been lost to time and endless moves. Some have survived, like this one, taken at age five.

Not a bad looking kid, if I do say so myself. This picture amuses me, though, cause I see so much of myself in it. The eyes looking off, thoughtful and alert, arms crossed, left lip rising in a slight smirk as if I just told myself my own inside joke, probably about the photographer or the entire situation. No matter how much I live in the present, the past still affects me. Perhaps that's because the past isn't quite what we think it is. If our souls and spirits are eternal, as I believe they are, then that means they exist outside the constraints of time. If that's true, then my reality and experiences now can have an impact on who I was then and vice versa. To take it further, the things I have yet to do and experience could very well be shaping my perception now just like I know my current experiences will have an impact on who I will become, which really isn't becoming at all, it's simply a continued state of being. A continuation of that thing we call the present. A continuation of now.

This realization has helped connect me with a lot more of my own past and help put in perspective some of the things that I never seemed to be able to shake and attitudes and thought patterns I still have no real explanation for. But what of feeling any sort of connection to family in the sense of being a continuation of a story of the blood that has passed down to me? Well, some strange things have happened recently. To explain one of them, I first have to tell you that I really don't like watches, or even clocks for that matter.

I've always had a very good internal clock. I can usually feel the time and I'm usually accurate within fifteen minutes. For the last year, though, I've been wanting a watch. I don't like most modern watches, though. They're way too big, or too flashy, or have too many features. I just want something that tells me the time. I also don't like to have to change batteries, and I have a love for great workmanship. In other words, I wanted a vintage watch. Something made when pride in workmanship still meant something real. There's something about a truly mechanical watch that's just appealing to me. So I started doing the research and keeping my eyes open for a vintage watch within my price range that really appealed to me. I just wanted something simple and efficient. I never seemed to find one. Then today I was talking to my mom about wanting a vintage watch and she tells me she has her father's old watch. I was really surprised. She's been lugging it around for over twenty years. Within a few minutes, she had found it and gave it to me. It's a smart Wyler Swiss made military-style vintage watch from the WWII era, exactly what I'd been desiring. It's a beautiful example of functional craftsmanship. The more amazing thing is that after a few winds, this 60+ year old watch with a 17-jewel mechanical timepiece started right up and is keeping perfect time. If not for some slight wear you'd think the thing was brand new.

My grandfather died when I was very young, I have few memories of him. Even when he was alive, he was battling several physical ailments, including cancer. He lived a hard life. When I look at this watch, I can almost see him. I wonder if he had it when he was in the Philippines as a Marine during World War II. I wonder if we stood on the same ground, separated by sixty years, when I made my own trips there. I'll never know but, looking at this watch and admiring its workmanship (as I suspect he did too), I think I do know. Suddenly, today, I had a remarkable connection to my grandfather, a remarkable connection to the past. One, I suppose, that was always there waiting to be discovered.