Forgiveness

 I've been trying to write a poem a day to get my creative juices flowing. I haven't really talked about it much, but I'm in the process of researching for some steampunk novels I'm going to write. I'll talk about it more in a later post and it's something I'll keep updating in case someone here wants to eventually read them.

But for now, I've been writing poems and I've also been reading poems (my post last month about the poem "She Had Some Horses" is an example). And just like most of the time in life, when you start observing something, the universe brings it to you in spades. 

One of my favorite websites is The Marginalian, and when I opened it today, of course there was a poem that Maria Popova wrote on Forgiveness. And of course she put it to music and had her friend Nick Cave read it.

That's the universe, man. It will mess with ya.

Enjoy!

Forgiveness

Glen Hansard

 I've always been a voracious reader.

I listen to books more than I read them these days. The responsibilities of my job are such that I can listen to podcasts and audiobooks all day long. It's one of the joys of my job, which sometimes can be few and far between.

When I was in high school, I had a one hour a day reading class, and the first class I did not understand the assignment. I've always been a fast reader and I also back then had a near perfect photographic memory, so I devoured books. Well the first week of class you read and based on how many words you read, was the amount you had to read for the whole semester. And I read a lot that first week. So that class actually became one of my hardest classes, because I had to read so many books that semester. I was reading War and Peace and Centennial and Shogun and every Stephen King book my mom had just to make it by the end.

This will lead to Glen Hansard. Don't worry.

There are some books that you end up loving so much that you read them over and over and they never get old. 

When I was young, that book was Where The Red Fern Grows.

When I was in high school, there was a fantasy trilogy by Patricia McKillip called The Riddlemaster Trilogy. I still read (now listen to) that book at least once every year.

And when I was in ministry, the book I read more than any other was a little known book called The Wind In The Wheat.

(In the below picture, you can see that it is still on my bookshelf, along with Where The Red Fern Grows on the far right, hidden by the photograph)

The author of The Wind In The Wheat is Reed Arvin, who played piano and produced several of the musical projects of Rich Mullins. (If you go back in my archives, you can find a post about me talking about how the death of Rich and the death of another person was one of the many paper cuts that killed my faith.) I think that one of the reasons why this book never gained much traction is because it sounds like some kind of historical romance novel.

It was not.

It was a thinly veiled portrait of Rich Mullins. 

Most of the details surrounding the main character of the novel were different from Rich's life, but it was pretty obvious who the source was that Reed was drawing from. In the novel, a young gifted musician named Andrew Miracle is discovered by a Christian music producer and agent who takes him and develops him into a bonafide star. It's about that journey, and how the pressures of the music industry, as well as the fandom, can change someone's life in both good ways and bad. 

Andrew Miracle played piano. I mostly played guitar (I mean I still can but I don't play much anymore). But there was a part of this book that I read over and over again because I felt like it described how I played guitar when I was leading worship. Here's the excerpt:

"What kind of thing is it? John told me that what happens when you play is extraordinary." She looked slightly away, avoiding Andrew's eyes. "He seemed to think there was some unique spiritual event happening."

Andrew sighed thoughtfully. It was hard to say just what happened in those Sunday services. He pictured the church in his mind, packed with parishioners. He saw Paster Mathews, squeezed into his suit, wrapping up his message, and giving Andrew the signal to begin. What happened next was something he never really understood himself.

"I guess I just minister," he said at last. "When you break it down, that's about it. I sing, and I play, usually after the sermon, but sometimes even in place of a sermon. The pastor kind of gives me the floor, and it gets real quiet in the place. I sort of close my eyes, and..." Andrew's voice trailed off uncertainly. "And what?" Carolyn asked intently. She seemed to be trying to see in her mind what Andrew was talking about.

Andrew looked up at her, uncertainty showing in his eyes. Talking about his gift was uncomfortable in the best of times because he knew deep down that he didn't control the gift and there were times that it actually controlled him. Those were times of ultimate trust. It was beautiful, but it also seemed wild and unsettling. At those times, he thought about some of the prophets in the Old Testament, how they had ranted and acted almost like madmen with visions...Andrew liked Carolyn, and he had no desire to come off like some mystic freak. It seemed a great risk to reveal this most intimate thing in his life. But as Carolyn gazed back at him expectantly, he suddenly, inexplicably felt safe. He decided for the moment to open the door.

"I guess I just pray with my hands," he said slowly, "if that means anything to you. I sit down, and I start praying. Only I don't speak. I just play."

Andrew goes on for awhile and explains that actually not everyone likes it. Carolyn asks how that could be, and Andrew says:

"They just don't. I mean I don't always play sweetly, you know? It's not always a peaceful thing. It's not always exactly safe."

Even today, I still think about that interaction. Andrew then tells a story about an old woman at a retirement home that he would volunteer to play at, and that story gets me every time (maybe I'll talk about it in a future post).

And now we get to Glen Hansard.

I first discovered Glen like most people did by watching the movie Once when it came out in 2007. I don't think I saw it in the theater, I think I bought it when it came out on DVD. And like most people, I ended up loving that movie very much. The story of a street busker meeting an immigrant in Dublin, both with broken hearts and dreams of making music, was so moving and sweet and sad that I have watched it several times. But what really got me was how Glen played the guitar. It didn't feel like it was an instrument, it was an extension of who he was. He played loud and he played hard and he sang forcefully and you could feel every emotion, every single heartache and joy, in the way he performed.

And I was hooked.

And if you ever saw me lead worship after that, you saw me in my small way emulate what came naturally to Glen. There was always a running joke about me breaking strings on stage and having to change a string in between services. Before I got my Breedlove guitar, I had a Larivee (I eschewed the normal worship leader guitar route, always went with smaller independent brands. My first guitar which I still have is a Takamine, which is the same brand Glen used) and I had played it so hard that I was developing a hole in the body, just like Glen had on his.

And if someone asked me why I played so hard, I would echo Andrew Miracle. Because I prayed with my hands. My guitar wasn't just an instrument. It was almost like a weapon, an agent of violence. Not violence in a bad way. Violence in that it wasn't always nice and peaceful. Sometimes it was angry. 

When my brother died, I remember a few months later leading a song at church, not knowing if I still believed the words anymore. I remember almost yelling out the words and playing my guitar so hard that I probably looked like a madman. When I was alone, practicing and most likely weeping, I would hammer out songs on my guitar and let all my emotions just pour out. On stage, even though most of the time I wasn't always authentic about who I was and what I was struggling with, I prayed with my hands. As I've told people who have asked me about those last days in ministry and church, I couldn't at that point figure out where the line was between bleeding all over the stage, letting people see how mad I was at everything and how sad I was about my brother - and acting like the good Christian, the Jesus junior who had all the answers and didn't struggle with anything because...God.

Glen was only eight months older than me. He died in a single motorcycle accident, probably doing what he loved. He was a man who had his faults, just like all of us. But if you've watched some of the videos that people have posted recently, you saw a flawed man who loved being with people, who wore his heart on his sleeve, who never forgot where he came from, who befriended anyone and everyone, and who would occasionally still stand there on a corner in Dublin, this famous performer, and play in front of a few people. And his intensity and his passion was always the same, no matter who he was playing for.

They say to never met your heroes. I think Glen was an exception. And I wish I had met him more than through his music and movie. Thank you Glen for praying with your hands. The world won't be the same without you.

(Look up "Say It To Me Now" from the movie Once on Youtube to get a brief glimpse as to Glen's playing)

She Had Some Horses

BY JOY HARJO

I. She Had Some Horses

She had some horses.

She had horses who were bodies of sand.

She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.

She had horses who were skins of ocean water.

She had horses who were the blue air of sky.

She had horses who were fur and teeth.

She had horses who were clay and would break.

She had horses who were splintered red cliff.

She had some horses.

She had horses with eyes of trains.

She had horses with full, brown thighs.

She had horses who laughed too much.

She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.

She had horses who licked razor blades.

She had some horses.

She had horses who danced in their mothers' arms.

She had horses who thought they were the sun and their

bodies shone and burned like stars.

She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.

She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet

in stalls of their own making.

She had some horses.

She had horses who liked Creek Stomp Dance songs.

She had horses who cried in their beer.

She had horses who spit at male queens who made

them afraid of themselves.

She had horses who said they weren't afraid.

She had horses who lied.

She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped

bare of their tongues.

She had some horses.

She had horses who called themselves, "horse."

She had horses who called themselves, "spirit," and kept

their voices secret and to themselves.

She had horses who had no names.

She had horses who had books of names.

She had some horses.

She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.

She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who

carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.

She had horses who waited for destruction.

She had horses who waited for resurrection.

She had some horses.

She had horses who got down on their knees for any saviour.

She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.

She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her

bed at night and prayed as they raped her.

She had some horses.

She had some horses she loved.

She had some horses she hated.

These were the same horses.

Liminal Spaces And Why Gen Z (and myself) Are Obsessed With Them

Even before the huge popularity of the movie "Backrooms" - an idea that originally appeared on the internet as just a picture of an empty furniture store in Oshkosh, WI - there was an immense interest in the idea of "liminal spaces."

What is a liminal space?

There are two categories of liminal spaces from what I've noticed.

One is an actual physical space. It's a bridge that goes from one barren place to another barren place. It's an empty parking lot or hallway. It's essentially a space between two paces where it's neither one nor the other. An empty mall is a liminal space because it hasn't been torn down, so the mall still exists; yet it's not a mall because the stores have long moved out and the mall itself hasn't been used in years. There is a mall on one of my mail routes like this. You can't go in anymore; but several years ago I would take my lunch inside and eat on a cushioned bench where a light shone through an above window.There was music playing throughout the mall still. The only people in there was usually me and some elderly mall walkers who were getting their steps in. When I went to the restroom in the mall, it was obvious that I was the first one in there in quite awhile. It was a little creepy, especially when I was alone, but it was kind of cool as well. I became drawn to the mall and became interested in actual physical liminal spaces.

Here's a picture I took inside the mall on March 26, 2019 (I knew I still had a picture of it on my phone haha).

I'm not the only one interested in liminal spaces. Gen Z is obsessed with them. In fact, the director of Backrooms is part of that generation. He started production on the movie when he was only nineteen years old. He also has a bunch of YouTube videos about the Backrooms, and there's another series he did called The Oldest View (which I find creepier actually), and some of that footage I swear could have been filmed at the mall I used to take my lunch to.

Why is Gen Z drawn to physical liminal spaces? Here are some reasons:

• Pandemic Trauma. The formative years of many young people were disrupted by 2020 lockdowns. My own daughter did not get to experience her own high school graduation. Experiencing normal bustling spaces - like schools, offices, and malls - completely empty created a collective psychological imprint that is visually mirrored in liminal photography. I have said over and over again that at some point, both individually and collectively, most of us are going to have a difficult time processing what actually took place during the Covid year, once our brain catches up with our body dealing with the shock of what took place. Interest in liminal spaces, I think, is just another way to process all the changes we've experienced in our lives.
• Disappearing "Third Places". As physical gathering places for youth have disappeared due to the rise of digital socialization and retail closures, the nostalgia for these abandoned, often retro environments (like 1990s shopping malls) has intensified. (A third place is a gathering place different than one's work and home environments)
• Algorithmic Escapism. In an era where online life feels highly controlled by rigid algorithms, liminal spaces represent an off-putting but liberating detachment. There's a sense of freedom, or randomness that is appealing to younger people, and some old people like me.
• Anemoia. This is such a fascinating word and concept. It refers to a feeling of nostalgia for a time period during which you weren't alive, or a past you never actually lived. This most definitely applies to me, because I've become fascinated with the real Victorian time period of history, and also the fictional steampunk universe that comes from the Victorian era. (More about that in future posts)

However, as I mentioned above, there are two categories of liminal spaces. One is the physical version. The other? The psychological version.

As Kim Egel puts it:

"It is that in-between zone where you're no longer who or where you were, but not yet who or where you're becoming. It's an empty stretch full of uncertainty and the unknown, which makes it deeply uncomfortable - and, not to mention, easy to want to avoid.

Walking through liminal space can feel like moving through a pitch-dark room. You can't see what's ahead, and you're not quite sure where you are - often leaving you hesitant, and searching for something solid to land on."

A psychological liminal space is a threshold space. It's a transition. It's a pause. It's a space that appears usually with big changes. Leaving a career. A failed relationship. Outgrowing your identity. A shift in your worldview. It can be a hard place to be. It can be tough moving out of it. You can be there for a short time, or you can be there for a decade.

My advice if you're in one? Don't worry about where you are. Don't fret about being "stuck." As Mike Yaconelli, one of my heroes when I was a Christian and a minister said,

"Getting stuck can be the best thing that could happen to us, because it forces us to stop. It halts the momentum of our lives. We have no choice but to notice what is around us, and we end up searching..."

Well, he says we end up searching for Jesus.

Which in my book, is perfectly fine if you're a Christian. Please search for the actual Jesus though, mmmmkay? Like, actually take his teachings to heart? Notice his compassion for the poor, for the needy? Don't conclude that what Jesus is about is some dumb libtard woke agenda, ok? /rant

But to those of us outside of faith, it does lead us to searching for something. To examine ourselves. To perhaps wake up from the stupor of doing the same thing over and over and over again, for years. To perhaps begin to being open to a new way of thinking, a new way of behaving, a new way of living.

Liminal spaces can be frightening, both physical and psychological versions. But all the young kids are doing it, so if you're there, embrace the uncertainty. Challenge your presuppositions, those preconceived notions of yourself and the world around you.

Embrace the void. It will be ok.