I chew a cigarette outside while waiting for water to a boil in a blue pot on an electric stove. Squirrels and robins surround in jittery flits that make me feel like a cartoon princess. Traffic hums by in street quaking fashion, and old men whistle at pretty girls crossing the street. It’s morning. Lick the dew off my chin. Feel the clothes against my arms. Rub the back of my hand against my face.  Morning. Sunlight drips to the earth and collects in pools at my feet. I toe it, lap it up, paint stripes of it under my eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made, I will hoist it up, fly it from a branch, be glad in it. Witness the world.

Color! I have a friend named Dylan who once asked me once if I thought we would ever be able to create new colors. I told him that I didn’t think that was really a color question as much as an eye question. “Then,” he asked, “Will we ever be able to create new eyes?”  (more…)

I am so tired of hearing about the true meaning of Christmas.

These somber homilies that always begin the same way: “he was brought into this world as a babe.” “God became a tiny baby in a stinking manger.” Something about Emmanuel. Something about God being us. Something, something, something. They’ve worn me out.

I’ve heard them all my life now: pulpit reminders of the Christmas miracle. Pastors shackled to the weighty annual burden of reminding their congregations of the extent of the mystery. The incarnation. And these seasonal injunctions have somehow become unbearable. I find myself annoyed. Like how I feel when a parent forgets they’ve told this joke before. I feel the urge to stand up in the middle of church and scream “I know! I know the whole thing!” Mary (how obedient! How wise beyond her years!”) Joseph (“How trusting!”) The innkeeper. The shepherds. The star. The Magi. The little town. The baby God. I have searched for some unexplored nuance to the tale. A fresh angle that would stun me into quiet contemplation.

I’ve got nothing. (more…)

(Note: Not for the squeamish, this one.)

In 2006, Germany played host to the particularly strange and morbid case of Armin Meiwes, a 42-year-old computer technician who had suffered an unhappy childhood with a cruel father and a domineering mother. A gawky, angular man with an Eastwood squint and robust dimples, Meiwes waited until both of his parents had departed this world for the next before posting a message on a website expressing that he was “looking for a well-built 18- to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed.”

It is a point of fascination that Meiwes found his volunteer, a particularly disturbed and stout-hearted individual whose name has never been revealed. The two met at Meiwes’ house (in a room he had dubbed “The Slaughter Room” and designed for this very purpose) and commenced to lobbing off chunks of the volunteer’s person. The man lay bleeding in the bathtub while Meiwes sauteed his flesh with salt, pepper, wine and garlic, and read a Star Trek novel. Meiwes then came to the bathroom, chatted with the man for a bit and, once it was obvious he would not survive much longer, split his throat and hung him from a meathook in a freezer, from where he tore off, cooked and ate 44 pounds of him over the next 10 months.

An web surfer alerted authorities to Meiwes after stumbling across the original posting (one shudders to think what grim business led the tattler to that message.) Authorities took Meiwes to jail, and the press went berserk. What sort of monster was this man, who fit the bill of our favorite serial killers so readily? Quiet. Polite. Well-adjusted, even. An easy smile. They dubbed him Der Metzgermeiste—”The Master Butcher.”

(more…)

L-R: My brother, my grandfather, me

I shove the key into the lock on the back of my car and twist it open, pop the hatch, and outs pops a good number of my worldly possessions, avalanching out. Everything I own is in my car, and right now I’m like the Dutch boy, sticking my thumbs in the holes, trying to keep my life from spilling onto the hot streets. Shoeboxes of photos. A crate of old records. A guitar I don’t know how to play. All wrapped in my embrace. And somewhere in this mess is my only suit. It is blue, which I doubt is appropriate for a funeral, but it is better than nothing.

My hands are full of everything I own, and I’m not sure what to do next.

*          *          * (more…)

I am making turning eggs in a skillet, spits of oil stinging my bare chest, when a tickle at my feet grabs my attention and I am surprised to see that I am not alone. A moth has hitched a ride on my right foot, and is contented enough that a few mild kicks do nothing to shoo him away. So, I get a closer look.

He’s a black cutworm, and the fourth I’ve seen this week. They’re native to the Gulf, but a smattering of tornadoes last week brought them up by the thousands. Now, they flutter about the Great Plains like itinerant preachers looking for an audience. If my experiences are any indication, they won’t get far. They’ve all seemed rather like this fellow on my foot: slow to react, disoriented, perhaps suicidal. I found one in my bedroom several nights back who singed his wings to embers against my lamp while I was on the phone with a friend, mesmerized. (more…)

I said, once, that love was God giving us something back.

As in, “everything else leaves in life and nothing really lasts, but when you love someone, it’s God giving you something to hold onto, saying – benevolently – ‘I know everything leaves you, but this is the thing you want most of all, and it’s yours forever.’”

Now, I said it to a girl that I wanted to like me, so I was being a little melodramatic (nothing new there.) But, I did believe it. Love is God giving us something back.

I know a very little better now. “Love is God giving us something back” is one of those things that sounds true. It’s a sweet thought for Christian lovers to whisper to each other, and it works nicely on a heart-dotted note. It’s wrong, however, as any life will attest. God, He only gives us sacrifices. Only gives us what we can give back to Him. He gives you a gift in one hand and fire in the other – “Will you burn this also, for my sake?” And, mark my words – as you love your life – burn it on the spot. Better to burn it yourself then to have God storm your gates and take it by force. (more…)

It’s a cheery Sunday morning when my one good eye pops open and I begin Sunday chores, which generally involves whatever is left over of my Saturday chores. Of course, church service is imminent so there are things that need doing. Coffee needs brewing, sound needs checking, candles need lighting. All to make the idea of church more appealing to the faithful. I was in Japan once, and scaled 1,000 steps to get to a Shinto house of worship. A monk told me the steps were there to deter the casual believer.

When the pastor shows, family and all, he surveys my work. “Communion?” he asks, and I turn in dismay to the bare, lonesome looking table at the front of the church. I haven’t set communion and, what’s worse, we’re out of crackers and grape juice. Walgreen’s is a ten minute walk, and off I go.

(Two Parenthetical Points of Clarification)

• My one good eye – The night before, I allowed Shorty G, to take me on a shortcut from Wrigley Field back to my home at Safe Haven.  Taylor, a runaway tomboy tagged along with us. Why Shorty G liked me, I don’t know. He was something of an important figure in Chicago’s drug trade, I knew that much, but he left me out of the details and that was the way I liked it. Taylor, his sidekick, could throw faster, spit further, drink harder and cuss meaner than any of the guys. They made for a pretty tough couple, and I was the odd one out. They did their best to keep things Christian, and I did my best to keep it real. However, when our shortcut led to a locked gate, both of our facades fell away. Shorty G didn’t seem very Christian when he yanked at the gate until the lock split off and the iron bars burst open, and I didn’t seem very gangster when the bars hit me in the face, split my eyebrow in half, and sent me face down into the street, spewing blood and causing Shorty G to go uncharacteristically bonkers over my well-being. He had to carry me inside, and sat by my side most of the night. “You might have a concussion,” he explained, shaking me awake. “If something happened, I’d never forgive myself.”

• Crackers and grape juice – I don’t like it anymore than you do, but the evangelical tradition has adopted an annotated version of the Eucharist of late, substituting saltines and Welch’s for the body and the blood. The overall effect seems to be a distinctly American take the Sacrament. The Lord’s Snack, as it were.

At any rate, this is how I found myself jogging to Walgreen’s, one eye swollen shut, hoping for a bargain on crackers and grape juice. It’s a pleasant enough walk when it’s warm, and Sunday morning walks are always welcome, the rest of the world busying themselves about enjoying the week’s most inviting morning. Skipping church is its own reward. (more…)