Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, A friend reminded me of a passage my hero Wendell Berry wrote in his essay "Discipline and Hope": The entire social vision, as I understand it, goes something like this: man is born into a fallen world, doomed to eat bread in the sweat of his face. But there is an economic redemption. He should go to college and get an education—that is, he should acquire the "right" certificates and meet the "right" people. An education of this sort should enable him to get a "good" job—that is, short hours of work that is either easy or prestigious for a lot of money. Thus he is saved from the damnation of drudgery, and is presumably well on the way to proving the accuracy of his early suspicion that he is really a superior person. Or, in a different version of the same story, the farmer at his plow or the housewife at her stove dreams of the neat outlines and the carefree boundaries of a factory worker's eight-hour day and forty-hour ...

Dear Eugene, The library is surely a strange place.  Books are strange, that's why. Really, how many of them do we need?  Still, mankind is churning out pages like crazy, as if we are to stop saying things to make sense of stuffs the stuffs of life will turn in on themselves and stop making sense. Story, especially stories, stuffs that make up life as we make life up, do we actually need another one?  Seriously, if I am to live another five times the way I've been living (as an avid reader), I still won't be able to even finish what is called the "classic canon of literature."  Come on Pastor Pete, don't lie to me now: you haven't read every word of Dickens, haven't you?  I have unread Dickens on my bookcase like stacks of Pickwick Papers. I was at the library last week reading random books, picked one off the shelf, let it carry me for however long and then onto the next, fiction, non-fiction, if the distinction is there or even helpful.  T...

Dear Eugene, Here's a passage from Walker Percy 's " The Moviegoer ": “What do you seek--God? you ask with a smile. I hesitate to answer, since all other Americans have settled the matter for themselves and to give such an answer would amount to setting myself a goal which everyone else has reached--and therefore raising a question in which no one has the slightest interest. Who wants to be dead last among one hundred and eighty million Americans? For, as everyone knows, the polls report that 98% of Americans believe in God and the remaining 2% are atheists and agnostics--which leaves not a single percentage point for a seeker. For myself, I enjoy answering polls as much as anyone and take pleasure in giving intelligent replies to all questions. Truthfully, it is the fear of exposing my own ignorance which constrains me from mentioning the object of my search. For, to begin with, I cannot even answer this, the simplest and most basic of all questions: Am I,...

Dear Eugene, I haven't been writing to you for almost a week now.  I can affirm you this is a good thing, indeed the best thing, the kind of thing that sometimes stinks and most certainly stings.  Life going well is never a walk in the park, a trip to Disneyland, or even having a good meal with family and friends or seeing your kids growing up healthy and strong: these are good things, for sure, but not the best . The best thing is like being Simon Peter  in the last chapter of the Gospel of John , or being one of the disciples on the road to Emmaus in the last chapter of Luke . Being in the last chapters which open up new chapters that build on but are unlike anything that has come before. Suppose I ask God for a miracle and God says yes, very well, let me grant you that right now. Cool.  Got what I want, a miracle, here in my hands. Then how do I live the rest of my life? Yours, Alex

Dear Eugene, This is the passage from Jeremiah I've picked to lead yesterday's morning prayer at church: “But blessed is the man who trusts me,  God ,      the woman who sticks with  God . They’re like trees replanted in Eden,      putting down roots near the rivers— Never a worry through the hottest of summers,      never dropping a leaf, Serene and calm through droughts,      bearing fresh fruit every season." Who is this "blessed" one? First, he or she certainly is a person who is in trouble. No one needs to "trust" when there's no trouble.  To trust is not "to believe" as in giving an intellectual assent, to merely acknowledge, to hold up my hand for the world to see my attempt.  To trust means, as the second line says, to "stick with" the trusted one despite all the rationales and emotions to distrust. Now what I've said just now is very good material for a very bad s...

Dear Eugene, I wrote this yesterday upon hearing the news of Jean Vanier's passing .  I felt if I don't let it out of me the stones will cry out.  Say Hi to Jean, if you are not already having tea with him :) A giant passes me by Ruach --a breath away Steps in flight carry me To  find the places of hope Life cornered Little demons Smaller gods Giants--you, of us all, would know Who graced the same soil Gargled the same sorrow Bold enough for heaven Meek enough for earth Tilled the thin meeting place For God to play I gasped in the good bad news Held it here--my heart, for long Savored the bittersweet Let it go to all my senses Back of my skull Tip of my ends My soul begs to burst I'm letting you go now Before I choke up And people around me ask Why I am drunk with joy So early in a day So out of place A grace too strange To  explain away Yours, Alex

Dear Eugene, I read on a poster at work about my company's "sustainability goals," and one of them says "90% diversion of grace." That's what I thought I read. Of course it was "waste."  Of course it's a Freudian slip of a Christian coming off a Sunday consciousness ready for a Monday submersion. Of course no one would admit to it, that there's grace everywhere but we would divert our mind to something else 90% of the time (if not more), that we would turn aside, deflect from the path of grace, distract ourselves from this true thrust of our life story. The same way there's no way the " Parable of the Rich Fool " can be about me: I've read all the details many times and the specifics don't match up to those of my life.  So Jesus wasn't talking to me and I can use this story insofar to speak his mind to others who need to be spoken to this way. The same way the commandment "You shall not take t...

Dear Eugene, It's almost the end of a day, my day, I am working towards it, and here I am writing again, writing differently than how I'd write during daytime, stealing moments then as I am borrowing from the energy of tomorrow now, a different sort of overcoming, a different way to let go of words. If there is a battery level indicator on my forehead you would have seen it dropped from green to red just now just for my spitting out the last sentence.  I am not seeking to live an easy life. There is a lady I know from volunteering with only two fingers on one of her hands, neither a thumb to make the matter worse.  Her life obviously isn't easy and it seems she isn't wanting one either.  I've met her in more than one volunteer posts, all of long term commitment. More than once I saw her holding a coffee cup in that hand, with two fingers, neither a thumb, in a way asking neither for anyone's gazing upon nor looking away.  They are just fingers, ho...