(Bi)Polar Bear:

from A SeaWorld Education Department Resource

1.Adult polar bears have no natural predators. Males occasionally kill other males competing for mates. Males periodically kill females protecting cubs.

2.Cubs less than one year old sometimes are prey to adult male polar bears—

3.Newborn cubs may be cannibalized—


Attempting to hide my profanity. Dates between entries. The gaps between my physical highs and lows. Cave days. I am a dangerous bastard. Exhausted and hungry. I’ve (supposed to have) been living on salad, rice and tuna for weeks now.

I Am The Salad Shooter.

Two months ago, I helped my boss butcher a buffalo. For days, I imagined the meat under the skin of several people I’d talked to. Separating meat from bone always does that to me. Too many senses involved— buffalo blood on my hands, the sticky tallow, the predatory smell—

There is always this loss of innocence, combined with a greed and a fear, stocking up for my family, in case of disaster, in case of misfortune, in case I finally tell some power drunk people what I really think— Clichéd suburban father run amok by fear. My shadow self.

Trinity is hit again. Again with a hardball. This time it is at practice. This time from the coach’s hand. Hit twice in the batter’s box; one ball to each arm. They tell him to keep batting. I am not there to rescue him. He loses trust in adults. Days pass. We play catch on my day off. He ducks even my softest throws.

More days pass. It is practice again. I have to swallow my vomit, push him into the batter’s box for his own good, for his own safety. Aggressiveness in the box means less chance of injury, I think to my self. He doesn’t want to bat. I tell him that he has to. That he will thank me later. I know he will never thank me later.

Trinity says that his hair is so itchy under his helmet, that he can’t bat today. His mouth is dry. I keep nudging him to the plate. Gruffly, because that is what I do when I am afraid, and I have been afraid every day since his birth.

Trinity says in a sad whine that he feels like he is going to fall asleep. I tell him to face his fears, to get in there and to punish the ball. He begins to swing. Stiffly several times, backing out of the box. I praise him for trying to stay in there.

Trinity swings, finally fouls it, and tension is released. He even smiles at the catcher. His next swing pokes the next pitch into left field. Later he fields hits for his teammates, smiling and joking with his coach, but I know that I am not off the hook. I am afraid that I am cannibalizing his love for the game, and for me… and I don’t know any other way.

Today, I am driving home from Bend. It’s raining like Hell, while I am trying to find rest; find my balanced self. I miss God more than I miss red meat. The blood, the sticky tallow, the predatory smell— I wish I could find God in one of those hundreds of churches that squat on every other city block in Central Oregon. Maybe I would find peace and quiet in one of those empty sanctuaries now, since their people are all holding picket signs in front of the theaters playing "The DaVinci Code."

I wish I had the time to make a sign protesting those signs. It would read,

“Jesus is on vacation. Why weren’t you invited?” or "The Passion Part 2: Dawn of the Dead"

But today, the only spiritual platitude that melts its way into me is on the bumper of a VW bus in front of me, splashing a rainbow of spray onto my windshield. It is a quote from my favorite movie, simply put—

“The Dude Abides…”

and abide I shall...

Seeing and Believing

Villae Populi, Romania: One year ago, on a pillowed green hillside overlooking a rural orphanage, our students were encouraged to think of an abstract — service— and to make it specific through their actions and observations. For the rest of the week we cuddled with babies, we played soccer on a makeshift field with the youth of the orphanage, and we worked to hand-pour a concrete bridge.

For me, there is one particular moment. Late afternoon, sun baking streaks of wet cement on our burning arms, we have poured our final concrete pillars into their metal reinforcement skeletons. A group of visiting Carmelite nuns begin to walk across the solid part of our bridge in a single file line, floating swans in their flowing white garments resembling that of Mother Theresa. The last nun in line strays from her group, lingers by me, and with both of her thin, ebony hands, cups my face to look me in the eye. She smiles. “Good Teacher” I hear her say, but her lips do not move; she hasn’t uttered a word.

An invocation. An undeserved harvest. More than the title of an educator of children. Her hands, soft and strong, bestow an anointing, as though I were divine. As divine as these lost children of Villae Populi, seeing instead, the face of the one she serves in each of them,

and now in me,

on that humble bridge, crossing an even humbler stream.

With Love, From the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Ashland Oregon:

At the Angus Bowman Theater with my students, watching The Diary of Anne Frank. I watch one student of mine, thoroughly absorbed in the performance. His grandmother was a survivor of Auschwitz.

It is the silence that frightens us most—

Afterward, rendered without words, we somberly follow the steps down to Lithia Park. Girls from another school, make catcalls to our boys, their heels clomping the wooden steps in unison behind us, like soldiers marching by a cramped, sacred hiding place.

The Natural

Blood is pulsing in my ears: ram, ram, ram,

Trinity is at home plate and is hit by a wild pitch which is way too fast for Little League Minors, -you heard it fffffffft toward Trinity's face, 'luckily' hitting his hand instead. “Part of the bat” the umpire yells, after lifting Trinity from the ground, checking for broken bones "Strike One" They couldn't let him take a base. Tears on his face, he’s given a choice to sit out, for an unshameful out, or get back into the batter's box. He flexes his hand, crying, looks back at me. I am clutching the chain link backstop. I want to scoop him up, take him home.

He connects to my sad eyes, and, why? gets back into the batter's box and, instead of cowering like me, swings like hell at two more pitches. He gimps back to the dugout, half-triumphant, chin still trembling, as both sides of the stands cheer loudly, on their feet, screaming whistles for the courage of the smallest kid on the field, pint-sized hero of the moment. This one will go down in history.

After the game, I sit him down, and while rubbing his hand, whisper something into his ear, something he may remember someday, for a story only he is able to tell...

PULLED FROM THE RUBBLE

Over the weekend of April 7-9, I had the privilege of traveling to Seattle to participate in the “Film, Faith and Justice” forum, sponsored by The Other Journal. It was a transformational series of keynote presentations, panel discussions, and documentaries culled from the Human Rights Watch traveling film festival.

What moved me most was exploring the interplay between justice and forgiveness, and how they are distinguished from a reactive worldview of justice based on atonement and revenge. What began this exploration was a documentary entitled Pulled From the Rubble, by Margaret Loescher. Here is the official film description:

In August 2003, Gil Loescher went to Baghdad on a humanitarian research trip. He and his colleagues were in a meeting with the head of the United Nations in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, when a truck full of explosives was driven into the side of the building. Gil was the only survivor from the most devastated section of the building. All of the other people in the meeting died. Through poignantly honest narration, and observational scenes of high emotion, his daughter records the family’s recovery during the months after the bombing. Filming becomes her way of dealing with the suddenness of the family’s changed reality, and a way of re-visiting the haunting images of the bomb site—a place of both horror and hope.
Film’s website http://www.pulledfromtherubble.com

One image buries itself into me, hidden there, a sacred stained glass image:

How after the explosion, shards of glass pierced deep into his flesh. Weeks passed, old skin sluffed to make way for the new. Shards of glass, burrowed closer to the surface, week by week, layer by layer, expelling the shards of glass, a sliver at a time, redeeming them from his body.

His daughter Margaret sees, through the camera’s smooth glass eye, an image

“…at once Hell and hope… a death place and a birth place.”

Smith Rock Diaries

On the shoulders of Misery Ridge, overlooking the famed Monkey Face, there is a trace of either skunk or reefer. Up high, I am high-- but not that kind of high. Looking down, every thing is brown below. The water, dark green, olive-drab, is not yet reflected by a springtime sun. The fields below, last week, were burning. Today, a John Deere tractor is plowing under the ash. Spring is coming.

Black Butte's bald head in the distance is still a snowy skullcap. The rest of the Cascades are draped in windswept snow-filled clouds, still holding on with their last fingers, still icy.

Finally, I am getting back out into the wild, finding sanctuary, wheezing for oxygen, blood pistoning through my body, rapid fire. And I am beginning to remember heights from a long time ago; sacred heights in California, Washington, British Columbia. Today, standing on this Smith Rock precipice, I am beginning to remember how tall I used to feel, how high, raised upon the shoulders of sacred rocks, able to see further, like on the sturdy shoulders of my father--

This is my palace. This sanctuary. These rocks tower like any cathedral spires I've seen--

A whisper from the wind. Simple, no words, but truly some language, a chilled breath, breezing where it will. The syncopated rhythm of the wind.

Maybe there will be nothing to write from beyond Malibu, that British Columbia shoreline, mountains swelling up from salty inlets, sharply carved by ice for thousands of years, and swollen inside of me, calling out, carving out my past, on a reconnaissance mission to find something I may have misplaced, something I could have lost, even if it is merely the illusion of something I thought I had, but never had. Should I look into this well, once so stocked with treasures, to find them all evaporated--receded?

Oh, who cares? Who cares if I have anything to say anymore? I know how I feel, at this moment, and I know how it will shift into the next. 'Tis the season between seasons, the holding on, the letting go, the hope for a new tomorrow, the surrender of what lies behind. All make for temperamental weather. I know the lack of knowing in my journey. There is no need-- to ramble about it any further.

And there is my liberation. No more need to be important. Except to my sons, my wife, my family, my friends. But in the end, not even to them. Liberation and Grief. I am the small speck of an unimportant soul, someone who sneaks into the party unnoticed and uninvited.

So be it. Now I can write--

Prologue: Out of Silence

A blank page--

Not necessarily waiting to be filled.
I remember not being able to write for the six months after my first son was born.

I was stained into silence.

The air we breathed together, and the light--weighed in far too sacred for the commemoration of words; empty, ignorant words like Peter's on the mountain with the newly transfigured Christ.

And lately, there are the breaking of unholy, oppressive silences. The pent up; distressed words- words for myself and for others- that must rise up- so they do not die stillborn inside. These are words that I have scarcely even begun to notice, because it is an immense and dizzy world, and I am just waking up to it. My latest writing project, a book of poems entitled Jacob Wrestling, dips its toes into both of these silent territories. One of the longer poems, entitled "From These Stones" can currently be found in the online journal The Other Journal (http://www.theotherjournal.com/) while the title poem "Jacob Wrestling" is forthcoming in Fire Magazine out of the U.K. There may be a future for this little book, although it has served a full and healing purpose simply in the crafting of it. So why have I entered the blog community? Just this. I have been greatly served by the weblog of a dear friend (see Mercurial Dreams link) and from the consequent rabbit hole of links toward deep-thinking/feeling people with an artistry for communicating their experiences. One more voice to the chorus then. And more links that daily cleanse me of my middle-class suburban decay. In this blog you will most likely find the sacred wed to the profane, as I am both a sacred and profane individual. And ignorant. And luminous...

Good Night Nobody...

Goodnight noises everywhere,

Jim Churchill-Dicks