Into the Wild and how stories unfold

We watched Into the Wild this weekend. Jack had picked it out, and I was very excited because I read the book twelve years ago, when I was living in South Korea, and remembered enjoying it a lot. I was not dissappointed. The movie, directed by Sean Penn, was wonderful and I was very moved.

It's a fascinating and true story of this incredibly wounded and senstive and beautiful and intense young man, Christopher McCandless, who tries to lose all the ties to society--to immerse himself in utter isolation in the wilds of Alaska, in his attempt to purge himself of the pain and woundedness of his family life and the ugliness of this worlds' systems. It's a true story, and tragically, McCandless died because of that isolation that he so craved.

He was an amazingly compelling character--he had this luminous beauty about him, as if he was really too beautiful, too pure, too "good" for this broken world--and it was if he just broke in the face of it. All the time, I kept thinking how deeply I wished he could have known Christ--how he craved Christ, it seemed to me. I hope that this helps me look at those around me differently. You meet those people, sometimes,--actually, I suspect far more often than we realize--the ones who are breaking on the wheel of this world, their own pure beauty (or as Lewis says, the weight of their glory) too much for even them to bear. But it's very hard to spot most of them-- I think.

The other thing this movie did for me was a grace-filled little tying up of a few loose threads in my life. I called my mom the day after I watched it (cause I always call her on Saturdays) and I was telling her about how moved I had been by the movie. I reminded her that she was actually the one who sent me that book when I was living in Korea, right after I graduated from college. She hadn't read it though...and my discussion with her didn't go that far, because it's usually not that enjoyable for a listener to hear all about a movie you just watched and they haven't seen. (Talk about an act of patient love on her part!)

But after I got off the phone with her, I reflected to Jack, "Hmmm, it's sort of interesting. She sent that book to me when I was in Korea. Me being there, to her it must have felt a little bit like i was in the wild. ..That venture of mine, it was just a little bit like Christopher's journey."

And Jack, with not uncommon but still surprising clarity, said, "It was more than just a little bit like that..."

He was right. In many ways I did venture into a deep and profound kind of isolation there, one I had long cultivated. And in many ways I was motivated by a strange and unhealthy and intense bitterness and frustration with everything in my history.

Honestly, without filling in any details, I came to self-destructing there in Korea.

I think I got a little more aware of how hard that must have been for my mom and dad.

But there are some profound differences, by grace, in my story.

One big difference is that I'm not much like that beautiful man. I am not that pure-hearted or beautiful and intense in spirit. Not at all...

Secondly, I did encounter Christ in that isolation. And then I wasn't alone. And all the days since that time have been a steady movement away from isolation (with some occasional months and years--including some very recent years--of self-absorbed backtracking) .

Recently, in the past year or so, by grace I have moved away from that old hurt and bitterness and shame and frustration that I had so cherished. My parents were nothing like McCandless's-- but I wanted someone to bear the responsibility for the messy feelings I had, for my loneliness (and I didn't want it to be me!) ... but now I feel only profound gratitude for the particular and wonderful and fascinating parents which I have. It's the same with my feelings about my extended family, the schooling I received, the friends I had, the tiny towns and midwestern culture where I grew up, the particular imperfect and sincere church I grew up in... All places where I poured out my contempt. But the truth is, they were all God's wonderful provision for me.... and they were beautiful and good in very real and specific and amazing ways.

I have some pretty intense sorrow that I used all that shame and frustration and bitterness as a way to keep the same controlling and selfish behaviour patterns for so many years.

But more than that, I feel grateful. In my own, far less dramatic way, I surely could have been another Christopher McCandless. We all could get lost forever in unforgiveness or in shame or in selfishness or in distorted ideas about ourselves and this world.

And again I come back to wanting to learn to move away from those old habituated sins of control that keep me in self-absorption and isolation-- because of the Christophers in the world, so that perhaps more of them could know Jesus.

A BATTLE

I recently watched an incredibly fascinating online video that speaks with great clarity and eloquence about the issues of consumption and justice and sustainability inherent in our current economic model and American/world lifestyle.

The video is http://www.storyofstuff.com/ and I would really recommend it to anyone who has ever purchased anything.

Every part of it was eye-opening, but there was one quote that just rocked me to the core. The video explained how we have become a nation of consumers, starting in the 50s, we determined to become a people who got all our identity from consuming. They quoted an economist, Victor Lebeau, who articulated this vision before it came about so perfectly....

He said, "Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption of goods our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction in consumption."

Just reread that quote a couple of times, please, and ponder it. Give some thought to this culture we find ourselves in. This quote seems to me to very much sum up what is true in our culture.
It's incredible to me that this was articulated with such prescience--- and now... how we entertain ourselves, how we think about our time, how we think about our community relationships, how we think about our church, how we think about where we live, our jobs, our relationships-- all of these have become twisted and affected deeply by our identity as consumers and addiction to consumption.

I'm still stuck on the fact that people planned this for us. It didn't just happen. It was intentional. I feel like I am seeing something almost as diabolical as some of the quotes and stated intentions of Hilter and Stalin here. I have this sense that there was real demonic power involved.

I don't want to say this to be over emotional, reactive, and overly excited. But when I read that quote it was like a little epiphany for me.

I hear the words of Jesus in gentle, loving, and diametric opposition== "I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly." and I want desperately to join in with Paul in warfare against these demonic plans that have brought God's beloved people into such bondage that we have found our spiritual, ritualistic and ego worth only in consumption.

These words ring in my mind... "We destroy arguments and every pround obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God. And we take every thought captive to obey Christ."

I want to join in a warfare for a new word about our culture...

that we will not be first consumers but rather first, in submission to Christ, creators and redemption lovers and justice-bringers and light-bearers and joy revelers....

The Universe Next Door

I just completed a read of the book, The Universe Next Door by James W. Sire. It's a "catalog" of different worldviews, from the perspective of the theistic (and evangelical Christian) worldview.

I was surprised, a bit, by how fascinating and helpful and new the information in this book was to me. It's very well-written, and fairly indepth in an overview sort of way.

What surprised me most was how many thoughts, questions and "worldview" issues I had. I had thought I was struggling with questions so unique and personal. But many times what I thought I was original and exceptional in my doubts and internal struggles was mostly, perhaps entirely, influenced by a conflicting worldview and system of thought. This was very good to realize because and examine. Over and over I found, with some embarrassment and much relief, that all that seemed so convincing and brave and compelling in the shadows--so much of existentialism or eastern philosophies or even post-modernism--became much less attractive under scrutiny.

When I started to examine these stances and their conclusions--realizing they weren't in any way unique or special to me-- then I could see their inherent problems, inconsistencies, and realize again and again that I choose faith in Christ, and faith in a transcendent, personal God as the way most consistent and fulfilling and truth affirming.

I also could see more clearly what was influencing the viewpoints of my friends and colleagues. This is helpful, so that once again I can be aware of how that attracts me and also, so that, by God's grace, I can be of some service to them in perhaps scrutinizing their own worldviews, if that is of interest to them.

The writer was very artistically aware--he quoted poetry throughout. This appealed to me, of course. One thing he said about the nihilistic worldview really stood out:

"The twist is this: (he's speaking about how many artists with a nilistic viewpoint have tried to express nihilism in their art). To the extent that these art works display the human implication of a nihilistic view, they are not nihilistic; to the extent they themselves are meaningless, they are not art works.

Art is nothing if not formal, that is, endowed with structure by the artist. But structure itself implies meaning. So to the extent that an art work has structure, it has meaning and thus is not nihilistic."

In which I share some more poems published and muse a bit on the label "religious..."

I had some more poetry published in the Sacramento Poetry Center's publication, Poetry Now. This is a very small, local publication, but it's still a little charge to see my poems in print. You can download a copy by following this link:

http://www.sacramentopoetrycenter.org/pn_pdf/2009/PN200901.pdf

Both of the poems published here have a little bit of a Christian worldview expressed, which is to be expected (hopefully, though, sometimes-- usually between 5-9 p.m-- there's not much Christian worldview being expressed by me at all).

They wouldn't qualify as devotional reading or Bible study material, still, you can see if you read the poems that I mention the Bible in one and prayer in another. And like I said, it's somewhat to be expected. I honestly think about the Bible a lot and I think about prayer too. (Do I follow the Bible consistently? do I pray more than I talk about praying? These are different questions.)

The other night at poetry workshop I brought in a poem that talked about an experience at a Communion service in extremely Christian terms, and it also described the Resurrection of Christ.

No getting around it, the point of view in that poem was Christian. Which is admittedly a relief to me.

So, why did I rankle when one of my fellow poets labelled it a religious poem?

He was very honest in saying that some of the poem was more accessible to him than other parts, and the part that was less accessible was the stanza imagining the ressurrection. I think he very generously and fairly owned his own cultural bias against religion was making it harder for him to appreciate the poem.

Still the whole experience frustrated and annoyed me. I'm not sure all the reasons why, but I think most of them are not so good.


C.S. Lewis's fiction is religious fiction, so is Flannery O'Connor's. Hopkins and Herbert wrote religious poetry, didn't they? Michealangelo painted religious art. Handel's Messiah is a religious piece of music. I would be over the moon, ego-filled, out of touch with reality and dangerously giddy with pride if I ever thought my art deserved to be compared to these artists--still, they are evidence that religious content does not mean unartistic or less artistically excellent.

I'll probably explore this a lot more later. I have to go wash dishes now.

Right now where I'm at is that I am going to have to make peace with the fact that my poetry is going to be called "religious" poetry by almost everyone who reads it. At least, everyone who is not immersed in my worldview.

Latero and with much affection,

Jenny

A late Epiphany

Talking to Valerie reminded me that I had long intended to post this poem for Epiphany when it came and there it was gone so quickly. Epiphany really comes much faster than Christmas...

I very much love the idea of thinking of Epiphany as the revelation of Christ to the whole world. But I don't have much sense of how to think about it or enter into it...


Here's this wonderful T. S. Eliot poem.

With affection, Jenny


A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Blogging idea

I recently started reading the funny, lively blog of another mom and fellow Oakhillian --http://www.preteenstoddlersandnewbornsohmy.blogspot.com/

She's very gifted as writer and in many other capacities, and she has a wonderfully fun voice, and I enjoy getting to know her just a little bit in this way. She recently completed a year of blogging every single day--365 entries.

My thought, after the initial--no thank you, I resist obligations of all sorts-- was that this small discipline would help a person get the writing juices flowing. It would be like journalling, in a way, with the added ingredient of a possible audience.

Jennifer said as much--that her writing voice was strengthened and developed through the experience, which she also said she didn't intend to repeat.

I won't be writing here every day, but perhaps I will treat it a bit more like a writing journal or writing prompter spot-- I would also like to encourage other writers to find "tricks"--places, audiences, disciplines, classes, exercises, groups, etc. to get them writing.

Let me know if you are trying any this year.

Jenny

Happy New Year

Happy New Year.

For your present-- here's a poem by Richard Wilbur --Love Calls us to the Things of This World--http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171793

This poem is (in part) about waking up-- that slow, wonderful and reluctant way we enter another morning--

The first line --

"The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn. "

Here we are waking into another year-- enjoy the poetry.