Tag: john blase

Posted on

Dear John – 8 February 2016

Dear John,

I remember your poem about your ‘wild like sage’ classmate, that gorgeous girl with the legs of a tennis player. I liked the piece then, and I remember thinking how brave you were to write those lines and offer them to us. Perhaps it seems odd to point out this piece for its courage when you’ve certainly written others that are bolder or more controversial, others that cost you more to write. I consider it brave partly because it’s rare to offer things that are so tender, things we would say only because they are true and they are part of us. You gave us your humanity, even when that meant sharing the adolescent stirrings of a young and shy (and perhaps slightly infatuated?) John Blase. 

John, I think this is one of the reasons why I am drawn to you, and one of the reasons why our friendship carries such depth for me. You are a solid man of this world. You love the things that you see and touch and smell. You don’t philosophize on love; instead, you write sonnets to Mer. You don’t wax eloquently on theories of prayer; you walk out on your back porch into the crisp night, look up at the stars and say ‘thank you.’ You may in some sense love the world and all its creatures; but you love Jack the Beagle first. I find myself falling more and more in love with the woman by my side, the boys who sleep down the hall from me, the hills I see past my front porch – and in you, I’ve found a comrade in this good life. And I’m so very thankful. 

I should ‘fess up, though. I’m not feeling like I love my boys very well at this moment. I’ve been short-tempered as of late. I yelled at one of the boys last night, and though I could probably make the case for why he deserved it, I never feel good after I lose my cool. It was a tender moment, though, when 15 or 20 minutes later we found ourselves making our way to each other at the same time (me out of my office, him down the stairs). We apologized to one another. We held each other. Maybe this is the best we can do with the ones we love, given our track record for screw-ups: we keep returning to one another, we keeping saying ‘sorry,’ we keep holding each other tight. I pray this will prove to be enough.

So Ash Wednesday’s about to hit. I know you’ve had something of a contentious relationship with Lent in recent years. I find myself drawn to these 40 days yet again. My soul feels bare and yet somehow overwhelmed at the same time. Lent seems to me a time to lay things aside, an opportunity to have an added excuse to say “nah, not gonna do that” or “no thanks, I’ve met my max.” Thomas Keating calls Lent the church’s 40 Day Retreat. I like that. Gardeners tell me that this is the time of year to be pruning those trees, cutting them back. For me, fasting or giving something up is like that — retreating, cutting stuff back, giving my body and mind good excuses for going simple.

Of course, sometimes the way we do these things makes it all just feel like more work, and God knows we don’t need any more of that. Nor do we need more reasons to be grim and sour. I’m looking for more joy. And thankfully, there’s room for each of us to find joy in the way that fits for us. I should say, however, that I’m not typically good at keeping Lenten fasts the whole time. I have good intentions, and I’ll do my best. A fella does the best he can.

Anyway, I remember this story about a catholic fellow intending to eventually join the priesthood whose college roommate was Jewish. The Jewish friend asked what the deal was with Lent, and after hearing the explanation, he said, “And you get to choose for yourself what you give up? That doesn’t seem right. You should let me choose.” So he did, and he instructed his roommate to surrender orange soda because he was pounding multiple bottles every day. I heard this priest tell the story 30 years later, and to that day, his Jewish friend still called him every year, a few days before Ash Wednesday, to tell him what he was to give up that year. I thought that was a hoot.

Well, this morning, Miska’s been in the kitchen starting her Moroccan lentil soup, simmering onions and mixing in Coriander, Cumin and a stack of other exotic spices. Tonight, she’ll pour olive oil over the Naan bread, sprinkle pink sea salt across the top. I wish you and Mer could walk down the street and join us at the table. I really do. 

 

Your Friend,

Winn

 

You can read John’s letters here.

Posted on

Dear John – 1 February 2016

If you missed the letter John wrote to me, you can take a look.

Dear John, 

You know I’ve been having some funky dreams this past week. Last night, I dreamed I was writing a letter home from summer camp. I went to bed thinking I’d write you today, and that’s how you showed up in my subconscious. I’m sorry you didn’t get a more exotic storyline, like maybe rushing in on a fire-breathing stallion, bare chested and wielding a Persian scimitar, taking care of serious business. Maybe next time, but still – the summer camp seemed nice and I wanted to be sure to tell you about it, so that’s kind of the same thing. 

I don’t remember the Challenger explosion as clearly as you do. I was in high school, and I remember the devastation — but not the details of the day. The first tragedy that really leveled me was years earlier, Hinkley’s assassination attempt of Reagan. For the first time I realized how evil people could be. That’s an awful thing for a boy to reckon with, isn’t it? 

I thought about you having lunch with your parents most days during your freshman year. That’s a wonderful memory. Did I ever tell you how after college, when I had moved back in with my folks and was driving to Dallas three days a week for grad school, that my mom started packing my lunch again? Just like when I was in elementary school. Maybe once every other week or so, she’d even drop one of those little notes on lace-edged Hallmark paper into my brown paper bag. Her note, penned in her elegant and flawless cursive handwriting, told me how she loved me or how proud she was of me. I still have one of those notes in my drawer. 

A few weeks ago, we passed the one year anniversary of my mom’s death, and last week, my friend and teacher Vigen Guroian’s mom died. He emailed me from the train to Connecticut, on his way to her funeral, and told me that the priest asked him to do the eulogy. If he was able to make his way through it, Vigen planned to read an excerpt from his book The Fragrance of God. I had forgotten that one chapter is a meditation he wrote to his mom, on the hope of resurrection. I told him I would read it again that day, in memory of his mother and my own. He wrote these words to her: “By giving birth to me, Mother, you have ensured my death and in some real sense hastened your own…Now as I watch you diminish with years, I tremble as I confront not just your mortality but also my own, since they are deeply, mysteriously interwoven.”

Mortality indeed. You turn the 49 this year, and I’ll tackle the 45. I’ve often thought I’d hit my stride in my 60’s, but still the years are ticking. It makes me want to live well. It makes me want to speak things that are true and not dink around with goofiness. Do you remember the part in A River Runs Through It (and I think stories 2 and 3 are even better than the first one that gets all the notoriety) when the crew mapping the Bitterroot Wilderness was perplexed about what to do with Wet Ass Creek? The name seemed uncouth, but Maclean and his logging buddies argued that its distinctive name should be honored and not watered down to please the sensibilities of bureaucrats (they even expressed giddy hopes that it might one day become Wet Ass National Park). So the mappers passed Wet Ass Creek up the chain, but suits in a far away office scrunched the letters as one word, dropped an s and added a long-e at the end so that to this day (and I’ve checked) it’s known as Wetase Creek (pronounced: wetosee). What a shame. It’s exhausting to play those games, isn’t it?

I love that you thought of me when you read Hugo (the loving of places and the “man not afraid to weep,” especially). But I want to hear more about how Hugo’s helped you with the stuck place. You knew I’d ask. You can write about it, or we can talk in person in March. I feel like I have swirling questions about my life too (I could call it “stuck” maybe), so perhaps you can pass good Hugo’s wisdom on.

I hope you splurge and get those new boots, even though the funds are tight (I get it).

 

Your friend,

Winn

Posted on

John Blase in Your Pocket

poem in pocket

As you surely know, the Academy of American Poets has christened today National Poem in Your Pocket Day. The idea is to take poetry to the streets, carrying a poem with you, in your jacket or pants as well as in your imagination. Let the words linger. Let them play with you. Take an extra copy and pass the good word along to an unsuspecting coworker or seatmate on the bus.

I asked my friend (and one of my favorite poets) John Blase to pen us a short verse that we could carry with us today. He was generous to oblige. Tuck this away, take it with you.

A Fine Thing

A poem is a fine thing
to carry around in your pocket,
that and a few pennies to hand
children having complete nuclear
meltdowns near grocery store doors
because their exhausted mothers
don’t have any small change for
Champion the mechanized stallion.
Just smile and say ‘here ya go’
then walk away. If you linger
you’ll break the spell of kindness,
and shame will worm its way in
to cheapen your gift. Most people
live on the shame aisle. So just go
on about your business and leave
a mother and a child charmed.

Posted on

Fourth Week of Advent: Courage

{This week, John Blase and I conclude our Advent reflections with the Gospel reading for the fourth week of Advent, Matthew 1:18-25}

Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid…

Each time I’ve read this text this year, my imagination falls on the description of Joseph’s response after he receives the gut-wrenching news that Mary’s expecting a baby. Joseph knew good and well he had nothing to do with this unseemly development, and Mary’s story about Spirit and angels and the like must have struck him as a particularly elaborate attempt to redefine the obvious.

Yet – and this is what gets me – Matthew says that Mary’s “husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” Unwilling to expose her to public disgrace. In a world that sputters on the fumes of controversy and defense of the tribe, I wonder what it would be like (and I’m imagining precisely those places where we believe our identity most threatened – or those places of public discourse where we are certain so much is at stake) to be bullheaded in our unwillingness to expose another to disgrace.

We often equate courage with those who thump their chests and “tell it like it is,” but I believe that often the bravest thing is to relinquish the compulsion to be right, to possess a trigger finger for mercy, to live gently. It’s a good thing to honor others’ dignity with such vigilance that there are lines we simply will not cross. Winning the issue or defending our “rights” provides a sorry excuse for crushing another human.

Though Joseph exhibited heroic valor, this entire story leads to the angel’s charge for Joseph to not be afraid. This is the word angels speak whenever they hit the scene. Apparently it’s the word we all need to hear. The angel prodded Joseph to push his courage further, to not merely refuse to disgrace Mary but to rouse his truest instincts and embrace Mary along with all the uncertainty sure to accompany.

It requires courage to love. It takes courage to live with our guard down and our arms open. But this is what happens when God appears. This is what happens when Emmanuel arrives, God with us.

Posted on

Third Week of Advent: Patience

{This week, John Blase and I reflect on the Epistle reading for the third week of Advent, James 5:7-10}

Be patient therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord…

Advent commences the Christian year, providing an important corrective to the fables by which we live. We are accustomed to starts that bolt from the gate. Gusto. Exertion. Master plans. To such hubris, Advent arrives, pats us on the head and says, Hold your horses there, antsy. You’re not ready for all that.

To begin with Advent means we start with waiting. We rest and pause. We hope and watch. We Sabbath. James tells us it’s like the long-suffering farmer who “waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it…”

With it – I believe this to be the crucial turn. To be patient does not mean to merely hold back or to camouflage how annoyed we are with delay. Rather, true patience means we are learning how to be with our life, to be present and curious and perhaps above all, tenaciously hopeful.

Walter Wangerin, a writer to whom I owe much, reflects the patience Advent invites. His dance (Walter’s word) with lung cancer has brought Walter ever more present to his life:

The nearness of death has relieved me of the need to strive toward goals and triumphs. No need to prove myself. I walk a level plain. Today is today. Tomorrow will come. And though I continue to plan activities well in advance, living doesn’t depend on their accomplishment, nor would any of them define me. I am already defined. Today is today. Tomorrow is enough…We are. It is enough.

It is a gift to have our grandiose visions brushed aside, to be patiently available to this moment. It is a gift to sink into the restful hope that God writes the story’s end.

Posted on

Second Week of Advent: Wild Man

{John Blase and I continue our Advent conversation. This week, we reflect on the Gospel reading for the second week of Advent, Matthew 3:1-12}

John the Baptizer was preaching in the desert of Judea…and people poured out of Jerusalem, Judea and the Jordanian countryside to hear him.

Burning Man aflame in the Black Rock Desert has nothing on the Advent story. When a wild man settles in the badlands, then the rest of us close up shop, gather our provisions and set out toward the fire and the thunder. Numbed by our conveyer belt existence, our heart has forgotten so much. But it only takes a mere glimpse of a spark, a glimmer of real life, and our desire, longing and hope shakes off the slumber. Whoever said it was a bad thing to be the moth drawn to flame?

What actually made John the wild man, though? His camel-hair habit surely furthered his holy-man austerity, while the locusts and wild honey only encouraged his reputation as a man disinterested in modern convention. But these biographical details could not be the center of it. Jerusalem was no different than Charlottesville or Denver or Trenton – you only have to stroll downtown, or partake in the neighborhood BBQ for that matter, to catch more than a few odd ducks.

John was a man too-wild for our aloof, cold ways because he knew something, he had heard something. “Repent, God’s Kingdom has come near,” John announced. The crowds flocked to the wild man in the wild place because John told them what their soul most longed to hear: God is near.

I believe the great fear of the human heart is that God is, in the end, far, far. What sickness or sorrow, what loneliness or ruin, could we not endure so long as we believed in our bones that God was near? Yet when we’ve lost this hope, when God seems too remote to matter or too capricious to trust or too fanciful to believe, then our most precious flame dies. Our hearts and our hopes sink into ourselves. They sink so far we forget them and assume they will never rise again.

But then there’s a John, speaking the wild words. God is near. You are not alone. Hope is coming. If merely a single word, the tiniest flicker, finds its way to us, then there really is no telling what might erupt. Good words are dangerous.

From what I see, too many of us think that God’s message necessitates shrill noise. We denounce and correct. We draw our tribal lines. We build synergy toward our clan or our corrective version of faith. What we do not say, with our words or our actions, is the wildest thing: God is near. Have your cause if it’s worthwhile. Promote your distinctions if you must. But please, in God’s good name, do not forget to tell us that God is near. If we don’t hear these essential words, the flame will stay cold and the heart will stay hungry.

__

This is the second week of the Advent conversation John Blase and I are sharing. So what I’m offering is only half of the picture. For his reflection on this same text, you’ll need to move over to The Beautiful Due.

Posted on

First Week of Advent: Surprised

{a meditation from the Gospel reading for the first week of Advent, Matthew 24:36-44}

Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.

Advent’s opening gospel reading gives our drowsy ears a jolt. Rather than visions of a rosy-cheeked Christ child, we hear of Noah’s flood that arrived with a shock, sweeping the world clear and an odd parable about workers sweating side by side – only, when the tale’s done, one has disappeared while the other stands alone, bewildered. There’s a final odd twist where Jesus likens God’s appearing to a midnight cat burglar who slips in through a window to pick a house clean while the family snoozes, a sentence that flies out of left field and should make every flatfooted preacher and every dry storyteller take very careful notes.

In each of these unlikely stories, the common theme is how God’s action interrupts and catches us off guard. The point is not to wag fingers so we’ll shape up and curtail the surprise, a kind of white-knuckle vigil. Rather, the narratives deliver a plain fact: God will surprise us. Whatever we figure God must do or whatever time table we insist God must follow, God seems to always manage something different. Like the lover who springs a proposal or the friend who shows up for the party when they’re supposed to be two continents away, God has panache.

Whether or not we receive God as a welcome surprise depends, I suppose, on whether or not we’re willing to be undone by love, whether or not we’ve got the moxie to say what the heck and exist at the mercy of God’s evocative – but always unruly – imagination. Our invitation is to live wide-eyed, aware that every single moment bears the possibility of God’s agile movement.

Advent, of course, is merely an occasion to remember what has always been true. God is never far. God is always near. And the only truly surprising thing would be if God were never to show up at all.

_

This Advent, my friend John Blase and I are reflecting on the same text each week, on Mondays, from Sunday’s Lectionary readings. We aren’t talking about the texts ahead of time, simply reading and seeing where they take us. To enjoy the full conversation, hop over to John’s ruminations.

Posted on

Click

When I shared Holy Work, the poem Miska commissioned poet John Blase to write for me as a Christmas gift, I said there was more to the story. I’ll give you one of the bits now. Christmas morning was a real kick because I had also secretly commissioned John to write a poem – but as a gift for Miska. Miska and I had plotted and schemed in order to surprise each other with the exact same gift.

Here’s the second from the series, the photo and the poem.

winn and miska.laughter

I’ll surely forget many
things, many days, but
I choose to remember a
moment when everything
was so black and white,
was so very clear to me.
I kept your hands to my
shoulder and flashed my
grin, the grin you said yes
to so many days ago now.
You then spilled your laugh,
the laugh that you and only
you possess. I know the ax
can fall at any moment but
for the space of one frame
there was no one else on
the face of God’s earth but
you and your laugh and me
and my grin, two unveiled
faces wide and alive with
smiles of great sweetness
captured in the click of an
eye. In that stark moment
everything, yes everything
was so very clear to me.

Posted on

Holy Work

Speaking of love affairs, last year Miska commissioned my friend John Blase to write a poem for me, his poetic reaction to a picture the two of us hold dear. I love the poem, as I love all John’s work. I love the picture. I love the ‘us’ that makes this holy work.

There’s more to this story, perhaps I’ll share it sometime.

WinnMiska

Holy Work

We’ve sat close together in
this strange and beautiful
providence long enough now
to know the secret to love is
more skin to skin than eye to eye.
I have felt your grief and joy
as you have felt my anger and doubt.
And we have both felt the urge
to sacrifice. to make sacred.
Some would call this mere empathy
but I find their lack of imagination
deplorable. No, our love affair stands
in this world of contradictions
with the fundamental texture
of one fiercely earned: it is palpable,
or as the Italians would say:
L’ho provato sulla mia pelle–
I have experienced that on my own skin.
This alone is love’s holy work.
an even loyalty, steady and clear.

Posted on

John Blase On Holy Curiosity

John Blase is an editor for a publishing house and a fine writer. You can catch him most days on his blog. He recently wrote some kind words about Holy Curiosity.

____

As an editor in Christian publishing, I read a lot of manuscripts every week. Some are handsome, some are plain, as we are. But a few, every once in a while, are good. I’d like to go on public record and say that Holy Curiosity by Winn Collier is good.

E.B. White described that pig-lovin’ spider this way: “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.” One gets that feel when reading Winn’s new book.

I could go on at length about this book, but I won’t. I’m an editor. I’ve got standards to maintain. So, here’s the approach of “where 2 or 3 are gathered”:

Number 1 – What I felt throughout Winn’s book was “spaciousness, room to grow.” In this age and day of books, most of them tell me what to think or not to think, what to feel or not to feel. Winn’s words allowed me room to ponder; such as he practices, he gives to us. There was no rush to get to the point or make sure I “get it” – no, these pages achieved an unforced rhythm. Permission to think/doubt/and wrestle with angels granted.

Number 2 – Winn quotes his wife and sons just as much, if not more, than he quotes Augustine, C.S. Lewis, or Bruner. Let me raise a glass to that modus operandi and declare HERE! HERE! A thread throughout this book is the necessity to keep on going; not a worship of the future, but an awareness of that’s where we’re headed. By paying attention (a form of prayer) to those voices closest to him, Winn demonstrates the ability to be formed by the past but not live there. No, he’s living with Mrs. Collier and their two sons, now, in the present. You may not think much of this point, but I read authors every day who cram quotes from dead folks in their books like teenagers from the 60s in phone booths. It’s kinda impressive at first and then it’s just weird. Thanks, Winn, for resisting that temptation.

Number 3 – A transparency exudes this book. Winn uses words like “exude” – so hang on. But, it’s a transparency that’s not exhibitionist. Winn doesn’t strip down to the buff, but he does tell us he used to part his hair down the middle and wear pink oxfords. And in the economy of holy curiosity, sometimes that’s enough to satisfy.

O.k. One last word – I was also struck by the belief that this author really loves Jesus. And that is not a slight thing. In fact, it may be the thing.

Thanks, Winn.

Top