My Christian Oddyssey Pt. I

I’ve been a Christian for most of my life. According to my mother, someone gave me a tract about Jesus when I was a young boy, definitely younger than 7, because we still living in New Jersey on Ft. Dix. I took the tract home and peppered my mother with all kinds of questions about God and Jesus, and again, according to her, I would not relent until she took us to church. I have no memory of this, but I have heard my mother tell the story some many times, it’s almost like I was really there. My mother had some questions about God and religion, and she was definitely a hell-raising skeptic. As she tells it, the preacher who spoke that day at the base chapel said that the Lord told him to preach on everything that my mother had questions about, and then actually proceeded to do. My mother took this as a sign that the Lord did indeed care about her, and the rest as they say, is history. I have been going to church ever since, sometimes feeling very close to God, sometimes feeling very aloof. That's a very vague statement to cover the next ten years, but who really has time to chronicle all their sins and virtues? Exactly. When I left home at age 17 (I graduated high school a semester early because I was just so miserable, then moved out to Philly to stay with my grandmother for a while), I really started to seek God out on my own, not in an organized setting where someone is interpreting the Bible for you. I was working at a bookstore out in Havertown, which is quite the commute, and also at one of the McDonalds’ out there, and so during my rides on the trains, trolleys, and buses, I began to read my Bible from cover to cover. I got a Revised Standard Version from the bookstore, and really tore through it. It was incredible, one of the best things I had ever done. I began to pray in my own voice, not just repeating the words and stylings of the church folk I had grown up around. I felt really close to God. I felt alive and vibrant like I had never known. It was better than being in love, and this is coming from a fool who was always falling in love.

Eventually it was time to return to Illinois and begin my studies at the U of I in Champaign-Urbana, also the place of my birth, as my parents met each other as students there a generation before. I began to drift away from God immediately and got caught up in girls, the Black Power student movement, and um… girls. It wasn’t long before my grades were falling and I was in danger of losing my scholarship (somehow I earned an academic full ride as a National Merit Scholar Finalist). So on the last day, I withdrew from all my classes (there was no way I was going to pass any of them) and moved down to Atlanta, where my mother had moved to after I had left home. I needed some time to get my head on straight. She had been telling me about this church she had been attending and was really learning a lot from. The name of this church was World Changer’s Ministries. It would indeed change my world.

To be continued…

Stop Wasting Time

I'm gonna break the cycle
I'm gonna shake up the system
I'm gonna destroy my ego
I'm gonna close my body now

I'm gonna avoid the cliche
I'm gonna suspend my senses
I'm gonna delay my pleasure
I'm gonna close my body now

These are lyrics from the last 007 flick, Die Another Day. I was watching this movie a while back and when I heard this particular song, I was drawn to the string arrangement. The strings absolutely make the song. The bass line isn't too shabby, but I definitely love the strings. Anyway, although the lyrics are a little simplistic, I can find myself related to the mindset that is behind them. I have to go for mine, start implementing some things that I have known I must do for years, but was waiting for my season. I believe my season is now. I'm already doing a lot right now (running my own business, finishing my degree, writing new lyrics and music, being a parent and husband, singing in the choir and on the praise team, etc...) but I know there is more that needs to be done. There is more that needs to be done, and if I don't do it, it will not get done. No one else is blessed with my gifts in my proportions. This means that there are definitely people out there superior to me at every inidivudal gift I have, but in terms of the mix of my various talents and the ability to synthesize them into uses greater than the sum of their parts, I am unique. And so I must do what I am here to do even if I don't know how I am going to do it or why. I am feeling a pull from my inner spirit to stretch forth myself, like a butterfly that instinctively knows that now is the time to break out of this coccoon. I don't have anything to prove to anyone. If I were to die today, I will consider my life fruitful and wonderful and fulfilling. I am not undertaking this to make up for any feelings of inadequacy, or need for excitement, or bragging rights. I just feel compelled and driven, almost siezed by something, and so I am going to yield to it. I doubt the butterly has any inkling of how drastically different his/her life is going to be compared to when it was a caterpillar. I guess I'm about to find out.

Sing, my sword!

Bobbin' Along

I state at the outset that this post has no predefined purpose. I don't know where I am going. I have no theme. I am writing just because I love to. Why do people bathe? To get clean, right? Well, maybe this is my equivalent. Why do people drink? To escape from a reality they don't particularly find edifying or meaningful? Okay, I think writing does that for me too. Whatever. I am sitting in my office listening to an old song of mine that I have revisited and updated. It is so funky I could just curse. When I wrote it years ago, it was just a track for rapping on. It had no chords or harmony of any kind, just a simple, hypnotic baseline, some snazzy understated drums, and an uninspired string arrangement. This baptised and born again version is too sublime for words. And when words are lacking, a poem must be nigh.

I wept and shed tears for those
whose prose
lacked energy and order
-any semblance of flow
whilst mine was divine,
defined by a mind so kind
and a soul much-maligned
yet refined
Again I say it is sublime

I don't know what that was. I don't rap anymore. This song is just... it is hard to explain it. Surely there are musicians and poets and lyricists and painters and other creative types who don't need me to explain it to them. For the rest of you, I'm sorry. Creating something, having something spring up inside of you and become alive without you even knowing what form it will take is probably the closest a mere mortal can get to being God. Before God was anything else to us, God was our Creator. Being endowed with this attribute is a blessing indeed!! I wish the whole world could feel this intoxicating, stupefying, unspeakable, undefinable-like-division-by-zero type of joy I feel right now. I'm going to go dance to the rhythm of my own soul now.

I've Got to Stop

I had a research paper due last week. I knew about it all semester. Actually we're on the quarter system but... yeah. I gathered the sources I needed and then let them collect dust. The paper had to be 1500 - 2000 words. 59 minutes into the day it was due (12:59AM for those of you who either just got up or need to go to bed), I had zero words written. No cover page, no bibliography, nothing. I was predicatably nonchalant regarding this catastrophe in the making, while others in my position would have been slitting their wrists with butterknives in panic. Why so calm? I'll tell you.

Because I am a writer. And writers write. Since my youth I have won contests and awards for my compositions. As early as 7th grade I was regularly accused of plagiarism because my gems showed skill beyond my years. I used techniques my English teachers hadn't seen since grad school, and vocabulary that was sophisticated without being pretentious. I love to write. I know good writing when I read it. I know good writing when I create it. I love stumbling across a particularly well written passage, and just bathing in it. I love learning new words and phrases and adding new weapons to my literary arsenal (I can't believe it took me 30 years to stumble across syllepsis!), so that when I need to emote, my pen and paper, or my keyboard and word processor can translate my ugly and primitive and confused impulses into something orderly, insightful and beautiful. I am not going to fear any research paper put before me, because even though it is not a creative exercise, it is still writing, and it still affords me the opportunity to put my own stamp on even the dullest of subjects. This is why I can be down 10 pages in a 10 pages paper in crunch time and still be cool with it. I write. Sometimes I wonder why I'm not doing it for a living, but I think I've found the answer. I'll share that another day.

Anyway, this is how it went from there. I worked on it from 1AM (Saying, "alright, that's enough goofing off, let's get down to business.") until 3AM, putting together the concept of the paper, looking through these books for quotes to support my position. I then went to bed, after maybe 300 disjointed words, and dreamt of Karl Marx and Adam Smith. I dreamt that I was sitting in an old rocking chair knitting, not a sock or a sweater, but a research paper. I can't knit, but I've seen my Nonny do it. She sits in her chair, with a basket full of different colored balls of yarn. She weaves them together into something I don't see a pattern or instructions for, just something she was in her mind's eye. I envision that all the words I need are at my feet in a basket and while humming an old tune a paper writes itself in my hands. I got up at 6 and began my day. Got my kids up and out the door, went to handle my business, and by 3 in the afternoon, I was back home. I wanted to take a nap, but I had to have this thing emailed to my professor before midnight, and I knew I could easily snooze until 9. So I stayed up and worked on it. Worked through my kids' constant interruption. Worked through people calling, asking me if I want to join a jam session or go hoop. Just knockin it out, organically. I grew my paper from a seed, an idea, like one of those fast growing watermelons in the cartoons. I don't build the paper or construct a paper, I grow the paper. By 9PM it is done. I polish it and play with it, tweak it and freak it, and at 11:53, I submit. Instead of collapsing in exultation (or exhaustion), I go play my Gamecube for maybe an hour.

Last night, I got an email from my professor. The grades for the research papers are in!! I go to login to the site where she posted the results (with her comments). The paper is 20% of our grade. I tense slightly. I have a 98.57% in the class, so I have nothing to fear -even if she hates my paper, how much can it bring me down? Relax, boy. There it is. 100%!!!!!!!!!!! Now is the time for exultation. Here are her comments:

"The paper contains skillful analysis of the work of two thinkers and is well researched. The paper has very clear structure and supports your main argument with illustrative examples and meaningful historical parallels. Well done! "

Ha ha, sweeeeeet!!! But I've gotta stop working like this. I could have written an even better paper had I disciplined myself a little more. I fear that success has made me a little lazy, and doesn't give me much incentive to change the way I approach my studies. I have heard that it's better to be lucky than good... but what about those who are both?