Dear us,
Allow me to introduce myself and in the process possibly describe some of the issues you may be dealing with yourselves. This is in no way complete, nor is it meant to be, nor will it ever be. It is a sliver in time and person of this fluid, ever-changing soul that was named Benjamin David Brown upon its birth and will be converted to dust upon its death and will never claim sanity in between. At the moment it thinks it would like to be called Jedidiah, instead. It’s a pleasure to meet you, wanderer. I am about to share things that I don’t even want to admit to myself. Be merciful and of good grace.
I am multi-faceted. My moods change more than the weather. Music defines me. It explains how I feel, where I am at mentally, spiritually, physically, where I am going.
Right now I feel as though I am at a crossroads. As if I must choose one of the many paths before me. But I want to take them all at once. There are too many experiences to have, places to go, people to love, and things to do all in this short time span allotted to me as my lifetime. I want to be a wondering vagabond, playing folk music and growing a beard and drinking beer with the company of a few good friends around a fire in a cabin in the woods. I want to be a rock star, screaming my heart out to packed out venues full of energy and life and lights and overwhelming noise: To travel in a van with several good friends living in the moment and experiencing the dusty roads and cheap hotels and hole-in-the-wall restaurants of America. I want to help people, but I don’t know how. I want to help myself, but I don’t know where to begin. I want to join a social movement and be a revolutionary, but I am caught up in the consumerism and fashion and technology of our society. I want to be a real follower of Jesus but I am caught up in my selfishness and lack of discipline, love and faith.
I am in the process of rediscovering myself: Of tearing away at all the different layers I have pulled upon myself so that when I look in the mirror, I can see myself finally naked and bare, in my true colors and light. I thought I was a missionary. I thought I was a hip-hopper. I thought I was a scholar. I thought I was a hippie. I thought I was a lover. I thought I was a rock musician. I thought I was fashionable. I thought I was current. I thought I was a fool.
I know I am wandering. I know I am kind. I know I have my beliefs and values… somewhere. I know they are often stereotypical and unfounded on anything more than what I find to be fashionable for whomever kind of person I seem to think I am. I am realizing that I do not fit any of their molds. I am realizing that I do not fit any of your molds. I am realizing that I do not really believe that the molds exist. The round holes are in my imagination. There is nowhere to actually fit in to. There is only acceptance to lie down in if you are lucky enough to find it. I am hoping to find it. If you would like to offer it up, I will gladly take it from you. It is better to give than to receive, but it is a blessing and a discipline to learn to accept what you do not deserve. I am realizing that I do not deserve much, and only possess what I do by grace. As Joe Pug so wonderfully sings, “Oh they say I come with less, than I should rightfully possess. I say, ‘the more I buy the more I’m bought. And the more I’m bought the less I cost.’”
I am constantly telling myself that I need to simplify my life. And yet everything I seem to do ends up being almost directly counterintuitive to that goal. I am caught up with the scene: of being hip to what is the latest, the coolest, most fashionable way to be perceived. I am realizing that as much as I give a shit, that I don’t give a shit. I am realizing that most of what I do is done out of laziness or out of fear, and often of both intermixed. I am a coward and a hypocrite. I contradict myself and who I believe I am on a regularly, hourly basis. You might not know it, but I am a mess. I am beginning to embrace that mess of humanity. If you think you have it all figured out, I’m sorry to say you’re more lost than the rest of us. Wisdom is realizing you know nothing. I’m not saying I’m wise, but I certainly know nothing. Every time I think I’ve got something down, there goes father time showing me I’m wrong again. Is it worth regretting all the times you were so sure of something that you no longer believe to be true? Or is the fact that you were, for once in your life, convicted of something worth celebrating as a tribute to the resilience of humanity against the face of all odds? Is the fact that you are sure that you aren’t sure a sign of hope or desperation? I will call it hope. For it’s all I have at the moment.
How do I integrate my love for technology and the ability to communicate with others all over the globe almost instantly with my desire to be a simple, minimalist, Hippie? I don’t know. Perhaps I never will. I know that for now I am erring on the side of technology and modernism. I often wish that all my material possessions would be stripped from me against my will and that I would have to learn to do without. You see, I lack the strength to give them up all on my own. The more I buy the more I am bought. I wish to be free. Free from the slavery that is consumerism, that is image, that is idolatry. I am so fucking concerned with my image: what my image says about my political beliefs, my spiritual belief, and my social beliefs, my musical preferences, my subculture of choice. Perhaps this is just a misconstrued desire to be understood and to be known by others, just like this essay. I sit up alone at night in front of my computer screen longing to have love and give love and experience love in reality, while searching the facades put up by those I wish I knew on social networking sites in place of going out and living the real thing. “It costs a lot to look this cheap”.
I often find wit more appealing than sincerity, but I know that underneath my skin I truly value the sincerity. Wit makes you look cool, up to date, smart and attractive. Sincerity makes you look vulnerable, weak, and undesirable. It’s too tied up with honesty that our society wants nearly nothing to do with it. Oh, we gladly voice our uninformed opinions. We just never voice ourselves. I want to break this cycle within myself. I want to confront my lack of direction and embrace it. I am going nowhere fast and everywhere all at once. When I am finally untangled, I will have breathed my last long before.
I am realizing that I often take myself too seriously. I also often take myself too jokingly.
But should we be laughing or weeping? I’m almost never sure, and usually doing the wrong one at all the incorrect times. Is there a sacredness that should not be touched, should not be defiled, should not even be looked upon? Can such a thing exist? Or did it exist before we fucked it up in our desire to make it ‘better’, more to our liking, more like us? After we weep will we laugh? Is there anything to do but laugh at the fact that there is so much weeping all around us? Perhaps we subconsciously but all too purposefully place less meaning on things than they actually should possess so that we do not become so entangled in the over bearing regret of all the extremely important things that we’ve ruined in our humanity- our relationships, our personalities, our innocence, our hope and faith.
Embrace your brokenness, it might be the only thing you have. Be content with your seeking. Don’t stop seeking. Realize that you will most likely never come to a solidified conclusion and embrace that journey without a destination. It is your home. Live there, in the present, in the search, in the hunt for something that you don’t understand and that you do not even begin to comprehend. If you seek you will find, but you almost never happen upon what you started out looking for. It’s far more mysterious and beautiful than that. This is what I’ve discovered. It is when you are most lonely that you will realize that you are not alone. It is when you are completely crazy that you will realize that you are more sane than you have ever been.
I, for one, am at the edge of my rope. I have been here for quite some time. I am dangling with one hand clenched to what I have always known. But I am learning that it is ok to let go. I am where, for the majority of my life, I was scared I’d end up. And now that I am here, I’m singing. Admittedly softly, under my breath, still afraid to let it out loud, in case I notice it and hush myself, “Let your self go. Be free. You are at the cliff and you must jump. You must fly. And if you do not, the fall is long enough for you to learn how on your way down. Don’t you see? We are at the bottom. Embrace uncertainty.”
My sister recently wrote a poem that spoke about her self as a candle whose flame is being blown in the wind and not wanting her light to go out. The end of the poem read, “But I say bring on the storm, cuz I’m a trick candle and I’m not letting this go.” I loved that line. It inspired me. And that’s how I’ve felt recently. I almost sadistically want to be tossed and thrown about in the winds of this world so that I can be weathered and prepared by them, arising soiled, bruised and windswept but stronger, wiser, more ready… Sometimes. A lot of the other times I want to crawl into my warm bed and let ignorance be bliss. And recently, I want to crawl into a silent corner and sob for everything- for everyone, for myself, for Jesus, for the world. And as much as I may want to, I cannot. I am a failure at crying. This fact alone makes me want to cry all the more.
I had a tear roll down my cheek today. It was around 2am and I was reading one of my dad’s sermons that he always emails out to us and that I shamefully always forget to read until I clean out my inbox once every 6 months. But his sermon was about silence, and listening for G-D. In the middle he did a ‘centering prayer’ in which the congregation was supposed to sit silently and meditate on the presence of G-D surrounding and enveloping them. And so I did.
And I felt the rushing of the world coming to me all at once like a flame that does not burn but warms, and flows like a silent, roaring ocean. I let it consume me as I remembered a picture on my Grammy’s wall that I noticed for the first time over this Thanksgiving. It’s a painting of a young man in a t-shirt and jeans holding a hammer and a nail, almost fainting from the fatigue caused by his grief and agony over what he has done. And behind him, holding him up and loving on him is Jesus the Crucified -The hands of the Savior holding up the very arms that put their holes in them. And a tear rolled quietly down my cheek onto the edge of my lip.
I had forgotten that they were so salty, tears. I had forgotten my forgiveness. I had forgotten my grace. And as the memory of the taste of the different tears I’ve cried throughout my life flooded my mind, so did the memory of the blood that washed away my transgressions, past present and future. I was so ready to sob until I fell asleep, allowing the ocean of once-dammed tears to re-baptize my reckless and ornery personality into something clean and new that I wouldn’t shudder over each time I saw it’s resemblance…
And I couldn’t. I was granted the gift of one precious tear. If I had known that I would only be given one, perhaps I would have savored it differently, not wiping it away so quickly but allowing it to grace my cheek for awhile longer, a sign that Yes, I can feel. Yes, I am still here. Beneath all the show and the masks and the costumes and the layers so piled on that I am often numb to everything, I do exist. But how I long to be broken, wide open and gushing! Set free to be myself. But, what are you to do when the only thing that it seems there is to do fails you? Wait, I guess. So here I sit, waiting.
I’ve tried praying recently. I usually fail. I wish I could. I actually sometimes pray that I would be able to pray. I don’t think I know how anymore. I used to know, or thought I did. I used to not be so arrogant and prideful that I was able to vulnerably open myself up and speak to the Almighty. Or perhaps it is a newfound humbleness that puts in me a fear of even approaching the Creator of my existence. I know the textbook answers to this problem. I went to a Christian college. I am a pastor and missionary’s son. You can talk about it all you want and explain it in all the best of ways, but it doesn’t make sense until you feel it. And this is a problem of mine. I am controlled by my emotions. I am a FEELING. And most of the time, that feeling is nothing. Absolutely. Nothing. I am getting better at allowing it to be something. But it is hard. And it hurts. But pain is better than feeling nothing at all. And it is a necessary step in the healing process.
I don’t even know why I am writing this. Perhaps it’s helping me sort through things. Perhaps it’s because I have a newfound goal of lucidity and transparency and this is helping me feel that I am in someway doing something to achieve that goal. However, if you’ve read this far I congratulate you. As you may be able to guess there is absolutely no structure to this essay. It is not thought out and then written down. It is written as immediately as it is thought. And it is therefore more confusing, and also more true to myself. Unless you have a similar personality to mine, upon reading a lot of this you will become what they call ‘worried about me’. Please worry about yourself. Pray for me, but worry about yourself. I’ll make it through.
As I said, I’m a trick candle, and it’s almost always been this way. I am not currently going through a major storm in my life. I am explaining the constant storm that has surrounded my inner life since I can remember actually thinking about things. It’s windy in here. Don’t worry, I’m used to it and I have a lot of coats – enough so that when you come to visit me, we can both be warm. When I figure out how to build a fire, the storm will have stopped and it will all have been worth it. I’ll have a fire! Then we can make coffee and talk about the good old days while I smoke cigarettes and lie in the grass underneath the sun of a thousand oak trees whispering into the silent hurricane, “All is calm. All is bright”. It’s deafening when you hug me that loudly, Jesus. Make my ears bleed.
Love,
Benjamin
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