Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, What does it mean by a person living his/her true "vocation"? I've read enough books on the topic to give you more insightful answers, but I will spill my guts for you so beware of the smell: I think it means knowing the best way to live the next day and then go ahead to do just that. One time, years ago, in a youth fellowship sharing circle, I spoke those exact words (though we weren't talking about "vocation") and tears came down my cheeks.  It was embarrassing, especially when obviously no one else knew what I was crying about.  No one other than me and myself, Alex and his own funny business.  It's ok , they couldn't say, for they knew not what was "not ok" about the situation I portrayed. I don't think the statement is a good definition for "living one's vocation," but I am not going to revise it.  It is not good enough because, well, to begin with, we are given more than one day in our life.  ...

Dear Eugene, I've come to realize there is a lot of self-preservation in me.  I would like to say I love myself too much but really I am in fear of my own falling, soon and again.  God is mighty and I know he certainly cares, but it is always good to have something on the side. I am walking on a long dark road now.  There is a man in front of me, the cigarette between his fingers the only light guiding him and me.  He is careful with it to keep it burning.  It is good to hold something in your hand when the road is long and dark.  Smoke lingers in the air smells like a beast hungry for love. You wallow in the solace of its breath and at once everything is so painlessly simple. Rain is not falling heavily like yesterday and I count that as an extra blessing.  I can also see it as blessing withheld the day before.  Holding and withholding, we're playing tug of war with God. A flashing light is coming towards me, its rhythm interrupting my...

Dear Eugene, "No one can do to us what we are not already doing to ourselves."  Do you believe this? I am not sure. First I am not sure if I invented this line; I Googled it and couldn't find anything.  Then I am not sure if I actually believe it.  It is too general a claim for it to not be presumptuous. The statement came up in a conversation with a friend and since then I tried to test its truthfulness.  What answers for only me answers no one at all; so I tried to read it between the lines of other people's stories. Well, I am still not sure. I've made an assumption, that there is an irreducible humanity behind every human face, however distorted the face might once, sometimes, or even frequently be, for whatever reason, inflicted from within or imposed from without.  It is another way to say one can kill the body but not the spirit.  It also supposes the past matters in our future eternal.  It ultimately speaks about hope, that ...

Dear Eugene, Yesterday afternoon I worshiped and it was worship proper. It's in a church in a shady part of town.  When the heat ran (and it ran loud) stench from the street was called in and sang beauty with us.  At my own church in the morning my pastor preached about the thin gauzy space between heaven and earth where worship happens.  The space was that much thinner last afternoon, my milky eyes clear, cleared. Someone prostrated himself, risked being called a clown, or worse, "charismatic," and I joined him in vision but not in flesh; I was too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly good, too clean to fall short of glory.  Others waved their arms, chanted, uttered cacophony that somehow blended in; everything all of one piece.  Someone pulled out a harmonica and it didn't shrill like mine. I looked up and saw a few black wires running across the ceiling, nylon cable ties marked the stations of its pilgrimage.  I'd have cut the end of the cable...

Dear Eugene, There's a change in my life and from now on I'll be a night writer. I will write you last thing of the day instead of first thing in the morning, reflections baptized by the vicissitude of waking hours, not fanciful beasts of yesternight. I've just installed a blue-light filter on this laptop because my eyes are tired, but it doesn't help my rapidly dying brain.  I can already feel a difference in my writing: my tongue is not as sharp.  Thoughts don't rush out to meet the sun, don't charge forward to seize the day.  I am composing a dirge. The change is neither good nor bad, asks for no appraisal; a change it simply is.  The life I live is what calls for sizing up, under a new metric, stretched to an unfamiliar dimension.  It is up to me to get down to the new shapes and strange colors, draw at night a picture that would hopefully survive the clear-eyed scrutiny of the next daybreak. Goodnight.  A night that closes with words has t...

Dear Eugene, I like the word "robust."  It means having a healthy strength, wholesome goodness, with a dynamic answering power to the complexities of life, things and people that make no sense to us from where we are standing now but we are open and attentive to the challenges of the strange and new, going from strength to strength  with a however hesitant honesty about our own flaws and failures past, present and very likely the very next minute. That's not the exact dictionary definition but how I meant it every time I used the word.  It is never a word of achievement to me but one of faith and yearning, a vision. The opposite of robustness is not cowardliness or powerlessness; it is brute force: twisting people and things out of their shapes into a contortion we deem right, cookie-cutting with a machete and we ain't chopping cookies either, and the most disgusting of all, in the name of love and goodness, God on our side.  " What would Jesus do? ...

Dear Eugene, Were you once like me, expecting bad things to happen all the time, especially when getting closer to Christmas, when everything is supposed to be nice? I think it has to do with the rain and possible snow.  The cold weather, this part of the world.  The shopping, people getting what they want and never keeping any.  People hopping on airplanes, leaving home to find home.  Friends gathering, in hope to present to each other a better past year than the one before.  Things are supposed to be on the up and up, to  progress .  Not that we are naive about life, but if we are to go down, we would like to be seen as doing so gracefully.  Nobody cries in a Christmas party, colors too bright for that.  Please leave your even most positive spin on a cancer tale at the door, where the slush is. But, man, look at the news.  I don't want to look at it.  I don't even know why I am looking at it.  Other people's trouble,...

Dear Eugene, A lousy poem I wrote today.  I might make it better, but that will take a worse day. Who wants to speak forever From a place of poverty? End of a rope you let me hang The long and short of my misery "Daddy, daddy, did you forget about me?" Melodrama in high key Is it music to your ears Pounds to the crash of tears? You give me Good News But can I do without the bad? A shade of darkness you insist A black bride I can't refuse In a village of the damned We exchange smiles, shake hands Not much crying going on To do that alone we stand An ounce of happiness Costs an ounce of the exact same A fair price I paid twice Now nothing left to my name To gain is to lose The gist of it I get To live is to die Can't get over that yet I walk in cemetery To learn from the experienced For every word I spoke for them They spoke a word to me I'd lack nothing If only you'd fill me up But how does it work With your gift of ...

Dear Eugene, A friend told me after reading Rowan Williams she could finally understand what she used to find incomprehensible about me. I'll need to elaborate on that, and, in Rowan Williams fashion, I think there are twenty different angles I could open things up but let me choose a few. Rowan Williams is a truth speaker.  He speaks in a way that honors the truth that he speaks about.  The fact that I suppose many will find my last statement having no true significance speaks about how untrue we often speak.  It happens on the pulpit as often as it does in a mall.  I tell it like it is and you should take it likewise.  Neither of us expect to be moved by my truth-speaking, not for even an inch, but please come again next Sunday.  Would that be debit or credit? How  we speak speaks about the  Whats  we speak about.  The medium is the message; the words are the deeds.  " The only preachers, the only lovers, with any...

Dear Eugene, As followers of Jesus, how do we want others to see us? It's a strange question, isn't it?  We think we know the answer and even lived the answer, but we have only acted out a set of assumptions. For example, we are supposed to be decent people.  We might not be "nice" people when it comes to insisting on what is "right," because, you know, (another assumption) being in the right is very important. In this age of compromise, we might or might not engage in vigorous lobbying to set the world right (even in matters of cardinal concern in the traditional "Christian agenda," such as sexuality and...well, sexuality), but, in order to honor God and make Christianity look good, we must direct the world's eyesight to what we are doing right, the dignified aspects of our life, if not stories of triumphs, at least a stubborn insistence on common decency.  Who are we to call ourselves Christians if we are not even half decent? Um...