Autumn and everything after
Even in the midst of life, death, and existential constipation, Jesus offers lightness, truth, and pink sunrises to those who know that life is a long pilgrimage.
Stand-up comedians are the last of the circuit riding preachers. They travel from town to town speaking in front of huge crowds, telling hard truths that would never be acceptable if someone else said it. (See: Jim Gaffigan on McDonald’s or Dave Chappelle on almost anything.) Like the original circuit riding preachers, these comedians will sometimes get canceled because their sermons bite too much. And somewhere in the corner of a coffee shop, Jerry Seinfeld whispers to the ghost of Norm Macdonald, “What’s the deal with universities?!?!”
Despite the sermons, despite the cancelations, they keep getting invited to the largest stages our culture has to offer.
This is the case with Nate Bargatze. He’s got a special on Amazon Prime. And he recently hosted Saturday Night Live. He began his SNL opening monologue with a brief introduction: “I’m from Tennessee. I’m also from the Nineteen Hundreds.” A ripple of laughter. Then: “I just think you’ve gotta say it. The world is so future now. And I feel in the way of it.”
I don’t know if I’ve resonated with anything as strongly in the last half-year as that sentence. (It brought to mind William F. Buckley’s definition of conservatism as a force standing astride history yelling, “Stop!”) He then goes on to talk about his age—that he’s 44, that his daughter is 11, and that she’ll be his age in 2057. “I don’t even believe that’s a real year,” he says. “My movies didn’t go that high in fake years. How am I going to talk to someone from 2057? I have more in common with a Pilgrim.”
This is funny for lots of obvious reasons, including his deadpan delivery. But it hits home at very un-funny levels, too. There’s a subtle sobriety to it, a seriousness slipping in underneath the deadpan. To whit: Lindsey and I turned 39 in October. Paraphrasing Bob Dylan, I’m not old but I’m getting there. After our September trip to the Colorado mountains, I jotted these lines in my journal.
Life is a tree
and the leaves are the years
and nothing gold…
well, you know.
I’ve been meditating on James chapter 4. What is my life? It is a mist. Is it anything else? So much feels uncertain these days. And increasingly I feel like I’m just trying to keep the leaves on the trees as long as possible. Which is impossible.
My grandma, my dad’s mom, is 92. She was very near death on my birthday (after a month of significant health issues). Grandma is better now, somehow; recovering and still making her pained pilgrimage through this world. That in itself is a miracle. And yet about a week ago I got word that her best friend from her hometown of Roswell, New Mexico, died. They knew each other for decades. They used to walk together in those dry, desert mornings. And now she’s gone. I imagine that my grandma—born in the 1930s and who has outlived all her siblings—feels an ancient loneliness in this world, like some wandering figure, the last of a generation of pilgrims, still trying to walk the path in years that, to her younger self, probably wouldn’t have registered as real if she had stopped to think about them.
A BULLET-POINT PRAYER: THANK YOU FOR…
The first frost of the year and seeing a fox—both on the morning of my birthday
James’s first flag football season
Rain and Lily making it into the Christmas dance production at their dance studio
The Jesus Freak dance partiy in our living room
Journaling on the hammock under the ash trees with a half-moon peeking over the fence
Visiting grandma in the hospital with our kids—and that she called them by their names and recalled entire verses from her favorite hymns
DESIGN AND DEVOUR
That lingering uncertainty leaves me with an unshakable and immutable sense that I do not belong in this world. That, I, too, have more in common with Puritan separatists (said the Anglican) than people born in the last decade.
I cannot shake the sense that so much of modernity is contriving against my flourishing and well-being, and that I am partly at fault. I own a smartphone. I fall down YouTube rabbit holes more than I’d like to admit. I am on what used to be called Twitter. (That there’s nostalgia for Twitter says a great deal about how quickly the passage of time registers on us in this age.) And these things do something to me. The habits they cultivate, the voices they promote, the ways in which they inform the way I think of the world—well, they shape me in ways that (most of the time) I’d rather not be shaped. They demand so much of my time and energy and attention. They sap me of focus and desire and will. I am beholden to them; I crave them. This is the paradox of late, Western modernity: we design what seeks to devour us. We inject the dopamine drip-line, the supposed benefits undeniably alluring and irresistibly desirable. And I hate it. And I hate how they make me feel about myself.
I don’t need help in feeling lousy about myself. I waste so much of the time I have to do something—like waking up early to write and watch the sunrise—and then grasp at the last fleeting moments to hurriedly and regretfully try to enjoy what I’ve already missed.
INTERLUDE NO. 1: “SPIDER BITES”
It’s like this world was bitten by its own kinda venom
And it’s gone too deep to suck the poison out
I don’t know if it’s true, but it feels like it is now
HEAVY COMPLEXITY
I’m tired. I feel the deep drowsiness of acedia starting to have its way with me. I’ve failed to give much sustained energy and attention to writing that I don’t want to write. My writing—and a good chunk of my vocational clarity—feels rudderless and impossible. I want to get organized and make a plan but I’d rather sleep in or do just about anything else besides the things that would move my heart and body forward in obedience and faithfulness.
On many days I feel lost, un-grooved, without flow and consistency in the things I want to be consistent with. There are too many things demanding my energy. Most of these things are related to challenges in parenting and family life. Some of them I may write about in more depth later. But these issues demand significant amounts of my non-working time and energy. They inevitably encroach upon the time I set aside for reflection, rest, and writing.
What I’m saying is that life is not simple. It is heavy in its complexity. Real wars and culture wars and ailing grandparents and heartache and questions about what I’m supposed to do with my hands and parenting. Parenting, especially, is heavy in its complexity. I came across this tweet and nodded listlessly in agreement.
These are all good things. Necessary things. I am or try to be all of these things. But I feel so fragile. I’m inconsistent with most of them. And all I can do is cry, “Lord, help me. Have mercy on me and all the out-sized expectations I have of myself.”
GOOD READS
Here are words from other people that I found worth sharing.
This reflection on fatherhood, Bob Knight, and a bygone era in American sports culture fits in well with the existential autumn-ness going on this email. If you loved Bob Knight, hated Bob Knight, or don’t know who Bob Knight is, you should read this.
And speaking of comedy, Susannah Black Roberts has an epic piece at Mere Orthodoxy called “The Birth of Comedy” that is worth every single one of the 67 minutes it will take you to read it. You’re welcome.
POETS’ CORNER
On my poetry bookshelf these days, I have Christian Wiman’s Once in the West and Mary Oliver’s Thirst. These two works find their authors approaching the coin of faith from two sides: Wiman from a softening, depleted skepticism and Oliver from the intensity of loss and pain. Oliver’s “The Uses of Sorrow,” near the end of Thirst, is an all-timer.
That’ll do it for now. Thanks for reading. Keep walking, ya’ll.