SundaySecond

This week I rode the train into Boston for the second time. The first time, I was all eyes for the world outside; I soaked in everything. I love the silent geometry of the constantly shifting rectangular shapes, the houses and warehouses, the engulfing-and-gone overpasses, the sudden break into an open field or the ocean--the breath of space before my sight is dashed back into the frenetic urban rhythm of developed shapes. I love the rat tat-tat-tat-tat sound of the train on the tracks, and I love seeing how the impossibly fast cadence is surpassed by the inaudible rhythms of the shadow of our train jumping across the track-side gravel. I love being completely surprised, almost stunned, as the outbound train explodes on my sight and hearing with such force I feel as if my brain has been set spinning by the force of the long pass.

This time was different. I had work to do. I had a website to analyze and a book on web-development to skim. I simply road the train in, and that was that.

The first time I stepped off the inbound train, I had my eyes as open as I could possibly have them. It was a stunningly beautiful day, the sky sang its deep tones of blue through the generous gaps in the platform architecture and highway ramps and the blaring white of cableAndConcrete--the Charles River Bridge--beautiful. And the people. Hundreds of us! All getting off the train, turning to the right and walking toward the station terminal without a single word to one another. Each one a wonder of spacial calculation and intensity, the whole lot of us a quickly moving stream of petals in a river, jumping around posts and benches and trash cans as if they were rocks on the riverbed. I watched this even as I acted my own part as perfectly as the next guy.

I don't even remember this procession this time. Perhaps someone else was doing the watching. Perhaps none of us were.

The first time I rode in, my secondBorn was still bundled up tightly in S's belly, content and muffled from our world in every respect. This time I rode in as a twiceFather, a Father of a newborn, as one quite unable or strangely unwilling to open my eyes again.

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Right now, I'm sharing the couch with two laptops and a self-help book. The first laptop belongs to my mother-in-law (she's here again for the weekend, S's whole family, actually); the second is ours, I'm typing on it. The self-help book is S's from college; Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald. Two laptops and a self-help book. That's right. Sort of a vicious cycle, isn't it.

My brother-in-law, B., and I were talking about vicious cycles yesterday. I said it would be cool if washing machines had a "Vicious" cycle on them, you know, just a funny thing Whirlpool could do to make us laugh. "No honey! You set it to the Vicious cycle! Now it's never going to stop!!" That would be great.

Seems like my life is full of vicious cycles of a particularly ironic kind. The emerging picture is incredibly sad: I am a sapped seminary student who seems too busy for spiritual disciplines. A man with a heart for the city who can never seem to get into one. A web-developer by necessity, yet strangely excited by the possibility. But what of the call on my life?

These cycles, what am I to make of the shape of these cyclones? Are they the ambitious forces of nature and bad-habit that threaten me toward the Void of godlessness? I worry so. Or are they somehow, somehow, somehow the workings of your hand on my life?

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You! It has been too long since I addressed you; I forget, I forget, I forget that you are my life. I forget that addressing you is the substance of my life. I forget that in speaking as self-address (my usual mode of speaking) I am speaking as dead to dead. Let my own address be onlyThis: turn your heart toward the Lord of life, the King of glory who speaks life and gives hope in every contour of his presence (a presence from which you cannot escape). Why do you turn away so quickly from this? Why do you languish in your own self understanding?

I hate how much my address of you is yet still the same strange kind of interruption I feel as I sit in a train passing another train. This address is always intense, always something given to me as the life-breath of resuscitation, but it is suddenly gone, and I am back to trying to make sense of the world as I speed through it. And lately, I seem not even aware of anything, the moment of address comes and goes and I am not speaking. I hate that.

I need you. May it be that I do find you, Lord.