Tag Archives: life

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I Believe

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I believe words are powerful. I believe the things we say matter. I believe you can say the same thing two different ways and you can have effectively said two very different things.

I don’t believe the world is getting dumber. I don’t believe in apathy. I don’t believe that my generation has less of an appreciation of fine art than my parents’ generation.

I believe fine art is different for everyone. I believe that’s okay.

I believe in God and love and bagels.

I believe ideas accumulate inside of us and if we don’t get them out (through writing, painting, performing, dancing, laughing) then there is no room for new ones.

I believe Real Living hurts. I believe it aches the way a good workout does. I believe you always need a Gatorade after Real Living.

I believe in plans and forms of fate and connections.

I believe in serendipity.

I believe in this woman named Sarah whom I met sitting at a bar who told me that haircutting was like engineering.

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A Short Reflection on Icelandic History

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I am at a Medieval and Renaissance Literature Forum this weekend. It’s pretty official.

Academics depress me, though. Especially when they are all talking about the same things.

But I went to this panel discussion today, and one of the presenters was talking about Icelandic literature. I don’t know much about Icelandic literature, and I don’t care to know much more than I do, but something this woman said blew me away.

In the 13th century, the Icelandic Commonwealth dissolved, leaving Icelanders to fend mostly for themselves. As a result, much of the literature the Icelanders had written down on animal hides were used as clothing.

People were  literally  walking around with stories on their backs. I wonder if we do this, too. I wonder if we  wear stories of our past on our back. I think we do.

Sometimes walking around with our story is really difficult, but what’s encouraging about the Icelanders is if our stories are clothing, we can change clothes at any time.

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Reflection on a Pack of Gum

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If you steal a pack of gum from a supermarket, who are you stealing that gum from?

Is it the supermarket? Is it the gum company? Is it the packaging company? Is it the farmers who harvested the sugar for the gum?

I don’t know. I don’t know that it matters.

A lot of people point to the Ten Commandments as if they are easy to understand, but even the easy ones are difficult to understand.

Do not steal.

That seems pretty easy, but when the Israelites received that commandment, there wasn’t a real monetary system. When an Israelite stole something from his neighbor, he was stealing something that his neighbor needed to survive – food, cattle, tools. In America, that very rarely holds true.

When a gang member peddles stolen cars, who is he hurting? He is the victim. His community is the victim. The person he sells the car to is the victim, not Ford or Hyundai or Honda.

Stealing now is not a sign of criminality, a sign of immorality, a sign of godlessness. It is a sign of a broken system. It’s a symptom. We need more curative treatments and less band-aids.