The Shadow of the Bird

           Ever since I was a small child I have held a special awe for birds. It isn’t the feathers or the metaphorically sharp eye or even the semi-hollow bones of a bird that captivates me, but the product of these characteristics, the flight of the bird, that I continue to dream about today. I love to watch a bird glide in for a landing or a flock undulate as one whole through the sky. For this reason I am typically seen walking around campus not staring at the path in front of me, but at the sky.

            Something about the flight of a bird gives me hope. It could be the way that the wind, utterly invisible to me, becomes tangible as it supports the feathers of a red-tailed hawk. Or it could be the sheer faith that each bird has in themselves as well as their environment each time they dive headlong into empty space, depending on the nothingness and the strength of their own wings for deliverance. Mostly I think my fascination stems from the relative impossibility of it all.

            I found myself gazing into the blue sky a few days back, mentally listing all that needed doing when I arrived at my dorm, when I noticed a few sparrows flitting round a tree. Fancying myself as a sparrow I yearned for the freedom to soar. Suddenly my vision seemed to flicker. I spun around in search of the culprit just quick enough to catch a glimpse of a darkness travelling along the grass. This patch of shadow proceeded to circle around me and I looked up to see a large falcon circling overhead. The inky shadow continued to surround me and I wondered at the way it seemed to absorb whatever terrain it happened upon, morphing into anything it touched with a liquid fluidity.

            All at once a horrific thought came to me; what if I am not the bird…. what if I am the shadow? Rather than floating effortlessly through the springtime breeze I am stuck plastered into the mud, conforming to whatever adversity comes my way. Capable of mimicking freedom but only by way of the solid ground. Helplessly, hopelessly trapped in the bondage of shadow but perpetually racing to catch the light. One after another these possibilities raced through my mind until the falcon, to my horror, initiated a headlong plummet towards the earth. As I stood there gazing at the sky the falcon abruptly pulled out of the dive and landed gingerly atop its shadow.

            The two opposites met and converged in a harmony of darkness and light. Neither destroyed nor remaining, the shadow of the bird hugged its captor and I let go of the breath I had been holding. This is it. This is me. Maybe I am the shadow but that is okay so long as I manage a reunion with my captor. I can’t outfly my shadow but by accepting it for what it is I can negate its power. I can do that.

Spirituality of Place: The Grotto

Before I launch into a description of the Grotto you should probably know a few things about me. First of all I grew up in a small town in Washington on five acres of natural evergreen forest. The majority of my childhood was comprised of barefooted adventures with whatever animals and insects I could find, plus my little sister. camping meant sleeping on the bare ground and any 'path' I traveled on was typically forged by a wild animal. Moving to Portland for college is really my first experience with city life and it has definitely been a big adjustment.

That said, I was absolutely enthralled at the thought of a botanical garden. Some of the most spiritual experiences I have ever encountered happened in the midst of God's creation so I was positively thrilled at the idea of a botanical garden purposed for spirituality. Upon my arrival at the Grotto I noted the grey skies and prayed that the rain would not greet me today. It took a few minutes of poking around to find the elevator and then realize it requires a token… this was the beginning my doubt.

After paying in the gift shop (which was strange enough) I passed the famous grotto with the big statue inside—it also housed dozens of candles, spotlights, and fake flowers. The spectacle was more than a bit too much for my taste and I walked over to the elevator. At this point I was becoming exceedingly skeptical about the whole ordeal. Reaching the top of the cliff, the elevator opened to a rock wall sectioned off by a steel wall with a window. This window was the first of the only three things at the grotto that really impacted me. Somewhere between the absurdity of a window on top of a mountain and the juxtaposition of steel and pine trees I felt the odd sensation of a stirring in my heart, although I wouldn’t realize the implications of this until later.

After consulting the map my friend, who had accompanied me, suggested that we walk the loop around the upper garden so that we could stop and read all of the signs and displays. As we walked I couldn’t help but notice the lack of natural scenery. Contrary to the advertisements and my expectations, the ‘upper garden’ consisted of little more than some sparse shrubbery and a few glorified fish-ponds. In addition to the relative unnatural state of the gardens there were booths stationed periodically along the path containing statues and story boards. Each figurine was enclosed in a well-lit glass display case. These cases were fine to look at from a distance but a closer inspection would reveal the second impactful aspect of my journey—dead insects. Each figurine was laden with cobwebs and dead spiders, and the bottom of the display riddled with dead flies and moths. This pairing of the life of Jesus and His deceased creation haunted me.

Disappointed and disgusted with the state of this place I made it clear to my friend that I was ready to leave. On our way to the elevator she noticed a path that we had previously overlooked and I reluctantly followed her towards it. After a few twists and turns the path opened up to a large metal building with glass doors. Hesitantly my friend and I ventured towards the door and stepped inside. Where the back wall of the building should have been was instead a momentous wall of solid glass looking out over Portland. Positioned towards this view were six jumbo leather Lazy Boy recliners. The air inside was slightly warmer than the outdoors and seemed charged with a tension that demanded complete silence. After a few minutes of gazing out over the expanse of Portland, of which I recognized virtually nothing, I abruptly turned on my heel and left.

            Rather than leaving the grotto rejuvenated or enlightened, I left it fuming with anger and it wasn’t until halfway home that I figured out why I was so upset. Flipping through the pictures I had taken on my phone I located the three that summarized my visit to the grotto: the window, the moth, and the recliner. What about these three objects had put me into this state of blind anger? After five days of mulling over these images along with the emotions they evoked in me, I have come to two separate but relative conclusions. One—all three of these images were of man-made objects. And two—all three images had the capacity for beauty despite the ugliness that I found in them. While I have focused this week on deciphering my findings I am left with nothing more or less than a boatful of questions.
            How can I find beauty in a man-made world? What is so glorious about the fabricated world that renders the natural world inadequate? Where can I go to be absolutely alone in nature? What is so spiritual about God’s creation in it’s purest form of the natural world? And most importantly why am I having such a difficult time dealing with these questions? In the past I could spout off bible verses to answer all of my questions but Warner has changed me. Where I used to see a clear-cut solution to whatever problem or issue I was faced with, I now see a mass of shapes and colors that do not seem to definitively begin or end. Every time I feel close to an answer I am bombarded with more questions. I recognize that I can’t answer them all myself and am beginning to realize that this may be the point; that it is okay for me to not know.

Tired

       I woke up at noon today, utterly exhausted. Lying in my bed I couldn’t help but wonder how I could possibly be this tired after a long night (and half a day) of sleep. It's not as if I have a job working me to the bone each day, or a child to feed and care for. What is it about my life that is so damn tiring? Even as I ponder this, the menacing beast of guilt flickers through my mind.

        What am I so tired of? Eating three square meals a day- and then some? Walking around a beautifully peaceful campus safely learning about my surroundings? Going about my day on my own two, healthy feet and sleeping under a roof every night? Guilt whispers that I have no right to be tired.

        My mind, however, calls loud and clear- 'Bullshit.'  I wake up at seven every morning to spend four hours attempting to absorb facts and processes that I have never before heard of, then turn around and study these facts and processes until my thoughts begin to skip like a scratched CD. Instead of relaxing, I go 'home' to a hall of other people with similar problems as well as their own emotional baggage who all want something from me, be it the ego boost of false companionship, food or resources, a pity party, an therapist, a tutor, the list goes on.

         Perhaps this is the key… I know who I am to the people around me. Student, teacher, number, character, ginger, classmate, nerd, cuddle buddy, hall mate, freshman. I could go on and on listing who I am to the people in my life, yet I haven’t the slightest idea of who I am to me. Ouch.

          At this point I am just laughing- to me this realization is worthy of a literal 'lol'. Here I am, puzzled by my lack of energy and overall zest for life, all the while living as someone else. What I have been doing here at Warner Pacific is discovering what each person want of me and becoming that person for whoever needs me. In this way I have been giving up bits of myself to please the needs and wants of my peers… with each person comes another version of myself but I can not settle on who I really am because I don’t actually know who that is. Just the thought of it is tiring me out!

         Obviously something has to be done about this. I can't go on being the person that everybody else needs, at least not without knowing how to come back to myself. So I have to figure this out then, the question that I have so cleverly and stubbornly managed to put off until now; Who am I? More specifically- Who am I to me?

        These are such monumental questions, and with some truly vital answers, that I am mildly overwhelmed. I think it would behoove me to begin by asking questions about something that I know rather than about something I don’t know. I am going to begin this quest for self by seeking out not who I am to me but who I am to God- at least that way I will  want to know the answers to the questions that I am asking.

So here it goes; this is the first step in a long process of questions and answers, wins and losses, weaknesses and strengths, searching for myself in the only place I really know- the Bible. I know that this journey will be a rigorous one but in the end I will (hopefully) learn how to rest in the knowledge of who I am to God and to myself.  Maybe I will even get some sleep.

Somebody's Everything

       So today I had a lab for Biology 102 at 12:15. I arrived with my binder under my arm and an piece of mint gum between my molars, ready for whatever tedious bookwork Dupriest would throw my way. On my way over to the corner where my partner and I typically sit, I glanced at the various  specimens of flora that Dupriest had prepared. Among the leaves and fungus I noticed a black pan containing something gray and housed in a thick nest of saran-wrap. This bundled up specimen was the only object I could not identify so I causally made my way back to the counter and gazed through the haze of plastic at two, symmetrical grey nuggets, about the size of my fist. As struggled to classify this unfamiliar species of fungus I recalled the ventilated steel casket in the corner of the room and I asked Dupriest "Is this a brain?" she replied "Yes, I don't know why it's out, the neuroscience class was supposed to put it away."

        With that response I leaned in closer and took a better look. Sliced cleanly down the middle, this sample looked close to the diagrams of the prefrontal-cortex that I had seen a time or two in various textbooks. The tissue was long dead, and I could trace a few major veins around until they burrowed further into the cold grey blob. "How exciting, a real human brain!" I thought, returning to my seat. "I could reach out and touch it, I could cut it up some more and look at it under a microscope and see-" That was how far my thought process progressed before I realized, for the second time, that a human brain was sitting on the table behind me.

        This time my thoughts cleared and left my head clear and silent, so thick that I struggled to catch my breath. Suddenly my mind erupted in a cacophony of simple and horrifying truths.

That is a brain.

That was a human.

That was somebodies everything.

The grey blob sitting on the counter behind me was once the source of a person's every thought and emotion. It generated dreams, unique to it's keeper, deciphering reality from possibility and all the while regulating heart rate and blinking eyes. Now wrapped in plastic and sliced in two. If I put that under a microscope, what would I see? The emotions writhed beneath my skin as I forced myself to answer the question. What would I see? Veins, tissue, some fat, grey matter. I would not see a timeline of this person's life, a myriad of colorful memories jostling for attention, a moral disposition, or an identity. 

These truths hit me like a freight train, and I have yet to shake the feelings of terror and awe that they evoked in me.

Stop the Clock

The WP men’s basketball game last night was intense. From the first appearance of the Knights to the final milliseconds I was completely engrossed in the game, which is a big deal for a non-athlete such as myself. At one point I commented on this vicious intensity, what with the clock stopped at 8.2 seconds. No sooner had the words left my mouth I realized what an odd concept that is… that a sharp burst of sound has the power to cancel any and all momentum in a space, that the numbers on the scoreboard could dictate the will of a man?

What if we actually stopped time? Would we ‘stop the clock’ before a test for a bit of extra studying? Pause time to gaze longer at a beautiful sunset?

The concept of stopping time at all is just absurd.