emerson on creation

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I like this one. It is as if Emerson finds an implied majesty in the life around him, one that points to even more magnificence somewhere beyond his own perception. The glory is everywhere...in everything.

when hope springs from simple existence

I walked in the building, that same building I’d walked into thousands of times. Somehow it was different this time. It was the first time. Back.

Much hadn’t changed. Many familiar faces still smiled my way. Still, it was uncomfortable. It was a mix of relief and grief, a tonic of remembrance with a tinge of never forget. Maybe we’ll unpack all of that someday. Maybe not.

In it all I saw a face that was mired in pain not too long ago. It was the face of the strung-out kid, barely hanging on. I hoped for him back them and loved him for his exuberance and the way that his eyes lit up when he spoke – when someone really listened. His drugs were never really the issue. Now he has a face of absolute beauty to me, a walking piece of redemptive evidence. He eyes light up the same as they always have, but somehow they have a gentler glow. He has been firmly gripped by a love that neither of us understand, a grace that truly goes beyond our ability to understand. He walks freely. He lives unhindered. Exuberant still.

He is not an object of my hope anymore, at least the same type of hope. I no longer hope for his rescue. I now hope for all that lies ahead of him, for the perfect picture of mercy and abundance that he can be to the world.

I cried seeing him there that morning. Same t-shirt. Same scruffy face. Same goofy guy. But his eyes were alight with the unmistakable caress of a real, purposeful life. And I was thankful for him all over again. I was also hopeful again. Maybe there are more like him.

I think he knows who he is. And I think he might read this. If so... My friend, you inspire me to try harder. You motivate me to give more. Your existence gives me hope.

wonka and wisdom

"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men."

-Willy Wonka

I have found more and more that it is often the triviality of this life, the nonsense, that allows us to so passionately pursue the heavy things of this life. People from all kinds of backgrounds escape from the harshness of this world in all kinds of ways. Starving Africans watch soccer and cheer for men to give them victory in some aspect of life. Bored Americans obsess over Hollywood gossip to the point that many know Britney Spears better than members of their own household. It's all the same. Watching sports or movies. Going to the theater or the pub. Escape. Enjoy a little bit of nonsense. Whatever that is to you.

brain buzz and cai guo-qiang

As I explained, there was something about the exhibit we saw at the Guggenheim in NYC last week that really has me captivated.

The museum itself has always been fascinating to me. To have experienced it with the incredible Cai Guo-Qiang exhibit inside really just has my brain buzzing.

(By the way, I am eternally grateful to our NYC hosts, who showered us with love and quiet comfort. They made this transition home so much easier for us, all while giving us incredible memories that will last a lifetime. It was a "wicked" good time. We love you two!!)

So, anyway, in an attempt to shed some of this burden I am carrying (I want everyone to see what I saw), here is the exhibition - online... I have watched it about 25 times now. Amazing...

Cai Guo-Qiang/Guggenheim online exhibition

Sort of a making of video from the Guggenheim site:

Making of the Exhibit

in nyc - mesmerized by the guggenheim

We're in NYC and will be back in San Antonio on the 11th...

We got to the Guggenheim a few days ago and saw an exhibit there that depicted a car-bomb and had a series of full-size automobiles (with fiber-optic explosions) hanging from the ceiling in the craziest (my ill-informed opinion) and most expensive (real fact) installation in the history of the Guggenheim. Just mind-blowing.

My brain is consumed by it all, so I would imagine that there will be more discussion on this soon.

Here is a photo from the exhibit in another space.

would an idiot do that?

"Whenever I’m about to do something, I think, “Would an idiot do that?”, and if they would, I do not do that thing..."

- Dwight Schrute

Wisdom from Dwight Schrute should always be taken with a grain of salt (seeing that he is a fictional character on The Office). I, however, could have benefited from employing this line (many times) in my first 27 years of life. Never too late to start.

fading

The 8-foot brick wall that surrounds the Coronation Women and Children's Hospital is topped by a series of rusting metal "V"s. These metal shards perched atop the sun-baked bricks serve as a cradle for a tangled, gnarled morass of rusty, foreboding barbed wire.

Rubbish gathers in the crevice that occurs where the street meets the curb. Coke cans, condom wrappers, and yesterday's newspaper battle for space with overgrown weeds and grass that invades the cracks in the asphalt.

People pass incessantly, walking in every direction. Many are students heading to school. As many of them smoke as do not. Lone men pass, clutching bottles that cling to last night's escape. Two young girls walk by, excitedly chattering in the cobbled languages that mark the area. Not one takes much notice of the old hospital.

Somewhere in the bowels of that old hospital a child is waiting nervously. She is watching a nurse prepare a syringe. The needle glistens in the sunlight that crashes in through the cracked glass of what used to be a window in the wall. That anything could be sanitary in this place is a miracle in itself. Dried drops of blood on the floor lead the eye to a wheel-chair laying on its side. Further down the hallway a bin marked with red "x"s and jagged biohazard symbols is overflowing with debris.

Prick! Eish!

Skin is broken and the glistening needle pulls blood slowly from the child's arm. This is a new sensation. It is a sensation she will soon be very used to. The needle slides out and the child grimaces. The event is over, the pain somehow incongruent with the considerable weight of the day.

The blood will be passed into a room, where it will be marked with the child's name and sent to another room where an educated face in a white coat will run a test on the contents of the vial - the same test that she runs on the little tubes of crimson life all day every day.

The results of the test will come back in three weeks and will be printed on a sheet of paper inside of a blue folder that bears the name of the child. The results will shape the entire future of the child.

"Positive" and the child will inherit her mother's taint, the unshakable stigma. The child will learn to endure the accusing stares of people whose righteousness seems to have spared them from the dreaded virus. The child will begin the battle for life. It is a battle she cannot yet win.

"Negative" and the child will walk away free, unbound to the biological catastrophe that is slowly taking her mother to the grave. The child, uninfected, will never know of the fear that once clouded her future.

Back outside the walls of the hospital, two stray dogs scavenge amidst the scraps of what lays discarded in the roadside. A young man, school-aged but obviously not heading to school, stops near the dogs, presses his face up against the brick wall, and begins to urinate. The wall changes color below him. He finishes and stammers off.

Not far away the wall has been tagged, black paint leaping from the washed-out brick. There, halfway between the rubbish and the razor-wire, is a bible verse:

1 TIMOTHY 6:10
FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL

For the people dying just inside those walls, in the crumbling towers filled with too few nurses and even fewer doctors, the "love of money" is the furthest thing from their collective mind. It is the lack of money, the inability to afford live-saving and life-sustaining medications, that is causing the inhabitants of Coronation Women and Children's Hospital, including the child with the fresh pin-prick in her arm, to slowly fade away.