slip-slidin away

(Note: Each week, the “description” line under the blog headline will change. It will be a line from a song, a quote, or maybe just nonsense from The Office. But, each week, we’ll memorialize the line that is leaving while installing the new one.)

“The nearer your destination, the more you’re slip-slidin’ away.” - Paul Simon

I really like Paul Simon. Ol’ man Garfunkel wasn’t too bad either. And maybe it’s because I have childhood memories of sitting in the backseat of a car on a vacation with the whole family listening to “The Concert in Central Park”, but that album always resonated with me.

The idea that the nearer we get to where we’re going, the further we actually are from it is a strange one, but one that I would subscribe to (if I could figure it out).

I take it to say that life is a journey, not a pursuit of a destination. And the nearer you get to making it a pursuit of a destination (be that a possession or a relationship or a heaven in the sky), the greater loss it is for you, as you are missing all of the roses along the path that deserved to have someone stop and smell them.

ben franklin on the nba

(My original intention was to run this quote, one of my favorites, along with Jason Kidd's photo. We'll give it a week and rerun it all if necessary. For now, Shaq in his Suns jersey works just as well...)

"Necessity never made a good bargain."

- Benjamin Franklin, US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer

the little things: of toothaches and achilles' heel

Have you ever noticed how it is always the little things that really nail you?

The other day, my lovely Stefani got this look on her face she seldom gets. Something was wrong.

I didn’t get to ask too many probing questions before she alerted me to the problem specifically – a severe toothache. Oh. Ow. You know those bad toothaches, where cool air and liquid and breathing are all excruciatingly painful? One of those...

And it struck me just how vulnerable we are. It occurred to me just how every little facet of our being is in fact paramount to the existence of that being in the first place.

Little things...

Consider Achilles, among the greatest heroes of Greek mythology. He was the most handsome and quickest of all of the Greeks assembled to battle Troy. He was physically invulnerable on all of his body except for his heel. The legends state that he was killed in battle by an arrow – to the heel.

Oh. Ow. The little things...

tolstoy on faith and hypocrisy

"Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side!"

- Leo Tolstoy, 19th-century Russian writer

the post-karmic stream

Well, here it is...the beginning of something else.

Obviously, I have been away for awhile. And I may be away for awhile longer yet...

Nonetheless, this will be the place that I reappear one day in the not too distant future. I loved filling in the margins using the "darkness into light" idea. Still, everything has an end. Recognizing the transition that we are making, and recognizing that there were certain things about blogging that bothered me on a deep (metaphorical?) level, I decided to keep the same site with a new, open purpose: to record and share the things that, for whatever reason, I cannot shake without putting them on paper, no matter what they are, as they flow in this post-karmic stream that we find ourselves.

we now conclude our broadcasting day

One of the most difficult, and yet most comforting, realities in life is that all things have a beginning and an end. There is an unspoken and wondrously natural progression. Purposes are fulfilled and the life then fades away. Some things last longer than others and some seemingly go much too soon. Still, all things have an ending. I find the endings most beautiful when those things, having satisfied what they were created to do, quietly fade away.

darkness into light

So, one last time, "why darkness into light?"

One reader found a connection between Hasidic-Reggae artist Matisyahu and the blog title. Others, we can only assume, created their own realities (or more likely never gave it much thought).



The truth is that the blog title was dually influenced by the bible and a certain Matisyahu song.

The bible-writer John, in particular, talks a lot about darkness and light. Never is it more profound than when Jesus drops “I am the light of the world” on everyone in John 8:12. He goes on to say that, “whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John later says that whoever wishes to be in the light must "walk as Jesus walked."

So, I think, in a very simple way, that is the essence of the blog title. Jesus is light of the world. And we can feed hungry kids, but it won’t satisfy them. We can bring water to the parched lips of the desperate here, but that will never quench their thirst. The only thing that will last is Jesus, the light. And so, we seek darkness (injustice, oppression, poverty – spiritual, physical, or otherwise) and we seek to bring the light to it.

A second, much more subtle idea that sits behind the blog title does indeed come from Matisyahu and his song “Warrior”. As a Hasidic Jew (read: orthodox – Google it), Matisyahu raps about some very deep, profound subjects. He also shares our history through the Torah.

During a performance of this song, he took a minute to explain where the idea came from:

“Hasidis explains that everything in this world, everything in this life has an inner essence and an inner soul. And when it started out, before the soul was reincarnated into this life, into this body and time and place that we find ourselves…it was basking above in the rays of Godliness. And it comes into this world for one reason, you know: that it should transform the darkness into light. It should take the darkness of this world and make it light…”

Now, the word “reincarnated” scares a lot of people. But this isn’t the idea that I will die and come back as a gerbil or a carburetor or something in my next life. This is the idea that our soul was known to God before our physical bodies existed on this earth. This is the idea that somehow, we existed with Him in paradise and that He has hidden that beauty and that “light” deep within us. It is this idea that leads many Christians today to believe that when we encounter “Truth” (i.e. God’s glory in Jesus), we know it to be true not because of some evidence or emotional experience, but because we “remember” it.

So, Matisyahu quotes an idea that says that we are known to God and He sends us into the world in order to bring the darkness into the light, in order to bring glory back to His name.

There are Bible passages that correspond. Check Ecclesiastes 3:11… “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

“He has set eternity in the hearts of men…” That is a really rich idea: That, somehow, we know what eternity is like. That maybe the reason that no amount of money or sex or power or status can please us is because we know of something (somewhere in the depths of our soul) that surpasses all of those things. Somewhere, God has set eternity and its beauty within us. Mysteriously beautiful…

2 Corinthians 4:6 says this: “For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,'made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

God made His light to shine in our hearts. Is that incredible to you? It freaks me out. God did this to give us the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ? I cannot even fathom the glory of God, much less that somewhere within me I possess the knowledge of it. Like I said, mysteriously beautiful…

Darkness into light...