Category Archives: Vignettes

Articles in a more contemplative, narrative, or poetic format.

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A Prayer at 32

For the glory of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Spirit at work among us:

For another year of life – for breath in my lungs and a pulse in my veins and a heart that beats at a tempo I do not set – I am thankful and offer my praise to you. You know better than any human how difficult my thirty-first year was. But just as you are the Redeemer, you are also the God of new beginnings. You know my struggles and my anxieties, just as you know my hopes and the inmost desires of my heart. You know that, despite all the blessings that attended me over the last 365 days, it was a joy to write “was” up above.

You are the God of my salvation, and this grace is of old. Today, however, I look to you as the God of new beginnings – the One whose mercy is new every morning, whose redemption is as steady and faithful as the sun that runs the sky. I ask that thirty-two will find me faithfully serving you in a church, growing as a father of two little girls, and as a husband to a wife who is no doubt an extension of your grace as well as your guidance. The psalmist writes, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Beautiful savior, you told your disciples “whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.” Let the delight I seek in you cultivate those desires in a manner that pleases you, and may what I ask of you each day be in genuine humility and authentic faith.

Do not be far from me, O God. As I seek to draw near to you, may you stoop low that I may glimpse your countenance and know your peace, for it is my very life – my one need in a swirling sea of wants.

You know the number of breaths my lungs will take, how may times my blood will pulse through this body, and how many beats are left for this heart. Should another 365 days come and go and I find myself still a sojourner in this world, may these words ring as true on that day as they do today.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever, world without end. Amen.

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What the Laptop Said: An Interview

When asked if I would allow for an interview, I was flattered and very excited. Finally, the tiny ice crystal of popularity had begun to tumble, soon to be a snowball and then a drift and finally an avalanche. But then I was informed that the interview was not for me; it was for my laptop. “My laptop?” I said, scoffing at what I believed to be an absurd notion. I was quickly assured, however, that this interview would not require my company. So, I suppose I’ll just go pick up a book and sit in the corner.

~Bo

Interview 1 – The Laptop


First of all, what is your overall impression of your owner?

Ha! That’s a great question right out of the gate. It stands to reason, though, that he’ll eventually be reading this. I mean, it’ll be on his blog, right? So, I wonder how honest I should be. Heh heh … Bo’s great, actually. Well, I mean, most of the time. He’s got fairly gentle hands, and he’s a pretty fast typist, which I like. Some folks, when they type, it’s like chickens pecking at the ground. Tick … tack … tick tick … tack … DELETE key, DELETE key, DELETE key, DELETE key … tick … tack tack … Oh, it drives me batty. But Bo’s movements are pretty fluid. He does start and stop a bit, especially when he’s writing a short story or blogging, but most of the time he’s pretty constant on the keys; that makes for a pleasant feeling. I guess the best way to describe it to you is if someone were scratching your back. You’d like a constant, fluid movement rather than a rake of nails one way, a few seconds of nothing, another rake or two, a long pause, et cetera.

Criticisms? I suppose he sometimes leaves me on a bit too long. With the Internet running, or his iTunes. He doesn’t realize it takes energy to maintain those programs. Powering down would be best, but I understand that’s not always convenient. I just wish he’d close me up a little more often so I could catch a few winks in between all the work he does. Other than that, though, I guess he’s a good owner. Well, there was that time he let his little girl kick a glass of juice over on me. I didn’t speak to him for several months after that, but we’ve since patched things up, and he’s learned to keep the juice glasses out of my personal space.

What is it like to be the most popular laptop computer on the market today?

I don’t really give it much thought, actually. I mean, the thing about being the most popular is that you don’t always feel unique. I try to stay positive, remind myself that I’m an individual – that I’m my own hardware and OS and all – but then I look over at some of the other desks at the office, and there’s Kristi’s Macbook Pro, and there’s Tebbe’s Macbook Pro, and on my network there’s a half-dozen more. What’s important, I think, is reminding yourself that it’s not what’s on the outside that makes you you, it’s what’s on the inside. No one has the crazy stories that Bo writes on their hard drive, or the same arrangement of widgets, or the calendar items, or all this ridiculous music. Whenever I start feeling like just another piece of one massive pie, I think about all the filling that makes me unique.

Did that metaphor work? Sorry. Bo’s a little better with the metaphors than I am.

If you could have a celebrity take you anywhere and operate you for a day, who would you pick?

That’s a tough question. Probably President Obama, but only if he was flying somewhere; I’ve always wanted to see Air Force One. Did you know they have wireless on that plane?

If he’s not a Mac guy, though, maybe the kid who played Harry Potter. He seems to have soft hands.

What about a person out of history?

Well, provided he would be shown how to properly operate me, I’m gonna say Einstein because of how smart he was. … Or, to really get imaginative, what about Jesus? No, wait, Buddha! Okay, can I have three? I mean, who wouldn’t want to see what kind of e-mails those three might write, or what their favorite websites would be?

Finally, what are your plans for the future?

Oh, I don’t know. Ever since the juice fiasco, I’ve been pretty conscious of my own mortality. I mean, I was in intensive care at Apple for a few days, and an experience like that changes you, you know what I mean? I’m just trying to live every day with a positive attitude, as free of freezes and vague error messages as I can manage to be. I’m sure one day I’ll find myself obsolete. We all will, eventually. I guess all I can do is remind myself of the good times, and enjoy how much convenience I bring to my owner, whether he always acknowledges it or not. I won’t lie, a “Thank you” every now and then would be nice. But I didn’t get into this line of work for the praise, you know?



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Language

It is the words we use to name our days, to give them each a face all their own, and to point out the bits of Truth that shine through each of them. So as to sound grand, we may use the big words we have learned and kept in the dim back rooms of our brain, but he who knows the strength of words knows that to reach for the big words that rest on those high shelves is but one course to take, and that, big or small, all words do their job much the same and to hell with size.

To tell of our days is to trace with a slow pen the shapes of grace and truth and hope and right and wrong and good and bad. Our eyes are the pen, our mind the scroll, and we draw far and wide and long and high and low, and when our days have grown short and our breath comes in rasps, when our ears are dulled by too much noise, and when the lamp bulbs we call eyes wane and blink out, and the shelves of words both near and far are bare, it is then that the sketch work is done.

And what we have drawn, what has been breathed out, is the same thing that has drawn us and breathed in and through us. It is the love of God.

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Trail 57: A Tale of Survival

The first peak destination

The first peak destination

Sometime around the third hour of our descent toward Brunig, Switzerland, I was thinking, This has got to be the most arduous experience of my life. By the third hour of the descent, my twisted knee was flaring in pain at every step, and my ankles were flinching against the terrible support from my hiking shoes (expensive, name-brand footwear that let me down). Isaac and Josh had chosen a beautiful, but very tough, route up from Sorenburg to a point called Schonbiel (loosely translated, “beautiful view”), and then a gradual descent along a ridge line before plunging into lower elevation by way of switchbacks that snaked their way through numerous mountainside cow fields. Unfortunately for all three of us, some nut in the Swiss equivalent of a Parks and Recreation department mislabeled the trail somewhere around Schonbiel, so that a marker pointed us in the opposite direction for our descent. This is when the fun really began.

 

They were mocking me

They were mocking me

 

Still on our way up

Still on our way up

 

 

Last Saturday in the Swiss Alps was cloudy and wet. As soon as one pass of rain ended, another would begin to billow up along the far high ridge, and eventually you knew from experience that you were about to be soaked again, so you better take in the partially unobstructed view while you could. Because of this, and the fact that the top of an Alp is not necessarily the warmest place to hang around, it was best to keep moving. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, someone mismarked the trail, and we wasted an hour and a half hiking, backtracking, rehiking, and then rebacktracking our trail along this ridge, pictured below, in a simple attempt to begin our descent.

 

Back and forth, back and forth...

Back and forth, back and forth...

 

No, Switzerland, 57 doesn't go to the right!

No, Switzerland, 57 doesn't go to the right!

 

 

By the time we finally decided to go against the marker and venture (go figure!) downhill, we were all a little worse for the wear. However, for the first time in a few hours, we were blessed with a considerable stretch of sunlight before being plunged back into gray gloom. It was at this point that I took my first spill upon the slick, muddy path. I did not know it at the time, laughing in spite of myself and my soiled backside, but this was the beginning of the hardship I was to suffer over the next five hours. It was not long after picking myself up and continuing the descent that my right knee began to whine with minor pain, and each time I had the opportunity to stop, I would massage it curiously, wondering why it was hurting. (A bright hiker would recognize that descending rapidly down a mountain with a heavy pack on one’s back is enough to do it, and throw in a little unsure footing and a slip and the reason for the pain would be obvious.)

Around hour three of the descent, when the trail disappeared into mucky cow crap and open farm fields soaked with rain, my knee no longer felt merely tweaked. It was screaming in agony … and we still had a considerable distance to go in order to reach the “schlaf im Stroh” (Sleep in Straw) before dark. 

In the end, the Alps beat me. Actually, that doesn’t quite paint a vivid enough picture of my struggle. The Alps vanquished me. Now, I’m not the kind of person who insists he is in shape when it is obvious he is not. And ten hours of hiking in the Alps is rough enough for anybody. However, I truly believe that if my knee had cooperated instead of faltering, I would have been able to make it to our destination. There is a kind of third wind that comes over you even after your second wind has been expelled hours ago, and it will surprise you how long it lingers, pushing you forward, allowing you to put one foot in front of another, one foot in front of another, one foot in front of another… 

We reached Lugern, about an hour to an hour and a half hike from our goal, around 9 PM. There was perhaps forty-five minutes to an hour of light left, but that did not matter. I was lagging behind my more capable friends farther than I had all day, and it was all I could do to make it up or down even the gentlest of slopes. We had to stop.

And so we did. And all was well, after all. There happened to be another schlaf im Stroh in that very town, and since all three of us were super-saturated with a day’s worth of high elevation weather, and all three of us were weary from wandering through countless cow pastures following a trail we often doubted we were still on, we found the musty smell of a barn and the crackling sound of bedding straw a more than adequate place to collapse for the night.

The unplanned bus ride back to our car in Sorenburg was beautiful, though.

 

The clouds parted long enough to snap this shot

The clouds parted long enough to snap this shot

 

The descent into Cow Pasture Land

The descent into Cow Pasture Land

 

schlaf im Stroh

schlaf im Stroh

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The Maker of Dust

In celebration of Ash Wednesday…

In the quiet dark of the chapel, he reaches to unfold the kneeler and his tired legs bend, weary bones popping. His elbows find the back of the pew. His worn, wrinkled hands clasp. His crumpled frame genuflects in prayer. Were he able to pick himself up from such a position, he would have chosen to prostrate himself, right there in the aisle – to melt away into the thin, dusty carpet, become nothing more than that. And this is what he prays as he kneels. That he is dust, and to dust he shall return.

His hands hold a tremor, and his shoulders shiver from the awkward position while his parched lips speak in silence, confessions of sins long forgotten by all but him and the One to which he prays. Pleading in penitence. Vowing repentance, then stilling his soundless words when he remembers not to be hasty before God with a vow. So, slowly, in few words, he changes his vow to a desperate hope. This, after all, is the nature of his prayers.

There is a depth to the little room that he has not noticed before. A spaciousness in it that the quiet has brought out. He feels small. There in the chapel, he feels he is shrinking. Eroding. Dissipating dust. Let me retain only that which is essential, he prays. Only that which is pure and vital … and if there is nothing, let me cease to be. Let me disintegrate to dust, and let me be captured up in you.

Not even dust escapes through Your fingers. He is comforted by this thought, and a thin smile, hardly noticeable behind the penitent grimace, curves his mouth. He looks down at his clasped hands, sees the dirt and grime of the world upon them, the blood and the death. He sees these things there behind the skin, where soap and water does not reach. He sees them there, corruption soaked into dust, and squeezing his eyes tighter, he prays all the more.

He hears the minister speak, but does not move. The voice echoes in the room that has grown so large. Still, he wonders if it is large enough to hold his sins. Yet even as the quiet wraps around him, shrinking him into nothing, the words find his hungry ears. “In returning and rest you shall be saved. In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”

And it happens that he realizes the cavern-like chapel, gaping larger than he has ever known it, is not to serve as a storehouse for sin, but a palace of peace. The yawning space around him is not empty, but has stretched and grown to accommodate something much grander. He opens his eyes again to view his hands, and there, perched before him, elbows on the pew, they suddenly appear clean, even beneath the skin.

He understands now that he is not shrinking, not dissipating away, but changing, becoming something new, something still composed of dust, but possessing a wind-like strength that comforts his weary knees and stills his trembling hands. He now feels a spaciousness within, filled with a billowing, peaceful whisper, words he cannot fully recognize, but residing inside, repeating encouragement he will carry with him like a blanket. And the largeness of the room, like a gaping mouth, is most certainly filled with something like a breath, gentle and sweet, capturing him, the minister, and all other mendicants up in a rest that floods over them like true love in the heart.

Again, he prays that he is dust, and to dust he shall return. Yet he takes joy in this, for within the quiet about him, and the whisper within, he feels the presence of the Maker of dust.