Thoughts from Culhwch

Every now and then the trains run funny schedules and stop doing anything normal. This reaks havoc on simple plans like… getting groceries. “Havoc” may be too strong of a word. It’s more that I don’t like waiting twenty minutes to take an alternate train so I can get back two stations later to the line I intended to take. It’s hard not to complain, and then let complaining turn into its favorite ally, grumbling. So, I’ll try to hold back for now. Apparently they are doing some needed maintenance or some upgrades or something. I gues I can only hope that maybe they’ll start running the newer cars down the R-Line. If so, I might be tempted to just ride the R all the way to Times Square, instead of chaning to the Express one stop away.

Brooklyn is pretty cool. And for once, I think I’m starting to feel more comfortable walking home at night. It’s been slow, and I guess I never really forced myself to walk about at night for the past couple of years. But I’m starting to feel like its almost routine. Healing can take a long time, expecially when I never really noticed that I still needed it. It’s kind of like physical therapy. Maybe that’s why I ended up here, in Bay Ridge. It’s like a safe space where I can finally work on those those sore atrophied muscles. And yet, at the same time, its almost nothing like that all, since some part of what sets me free at night has to do with faith, has to do with discovering what it means to be truly reliant on God. I guess that’s what I’m starting to learn. I’m starting to learn that the kind of peace that comes when we trust fully that God will take care of us, through the rough passages and through the easy ones, is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever experienced. It’s one of the most powerful, one of most empowering experiences of God’s glory that I think we have access to.

I’m not sure what any of this has to do with Brooklyn subway lines not doing what I want every time I get on. Two things that are on my mind I guess.

I’m looking at my spam filter stats and I’m starting to wonder if its not really working correctly. So there may be some comments that have been lost on here.

Today is a U2 day. One of those days where U2 just seems like the right thing to listen to. I thouht I could listen to Coldplay… but I needed something a little different.

At work we are getting ready for the onslaught of the first year students. They’ll be in tomorrow, and the insanity will ensue. I think that’s the point where everything just goes wild, where students start crawling out of every open ventilation shaft like some sort of horror flick where spiders spew from everywhere. Ok… so maybe I shouldn’t compare students to spiders or some sort of infestation. Still, from the way it sounds things will start getting pretty crazy. I guess that’s ok though, it’s what I signed up for, and besides I work better with a little bit pressure, right?

In other news its really hot. Really hot. Here’s to hoping it will cool off tomorrow. Tonight I feel like writing. I think I’ll get going on my Great American Novel. It’s funny everybody keeps trying to write it, but has anyone ever really succeeded? I mean if everybody feels compelled to try to write it why haven’t we seen it yet? Perhaps it has to do with the multiplicity of possible concepts for such a creation -not least of the problems the impossibility of defining “American.” In the context it seems to be both mythical and yet experienced. The Great American Novel has to reside it many places at once. It has to speak to a common sense of who we are as a people, of where we are and what it means to be American. On the other hand it must also  refer to something which is unseen, unheard, unexperienced. I guess the real question is, is that fabricated from the author’s imagination, or is it a vision of the future, somehow prophetic in the way it calls people back to a founding vision which must actually precede all sense of peoplehood and reside further back and further forward, linking the present to a past and a future which transcends the boundaries established by the commonality which would make it American. To be less enigmatic, might the Great American Novel be less American and more religious? Might it call a people toward Godliness?

~david