I met Lorne the way people often tend to meet these days, online.  His social media presence is felt strongly in Red Deer where he is known for his work as an instructor at Red Deer College, his consulting firm Grandview Consulting, and his efforts to found a citizens group known as Rethink Red Deer. Lorne grew up in the central Alberta.

A writer on the web, of essays and poetry, I was pleased to learn of his new book of selected poems, Drawing Back to Take a Running Jump.  I jumped (ahem) at the chance to ask him questions after I finished reading the collection of poetry, to learn about his writing process and his perspective on verse.

I interviewed Lorne via email.

Andrew Kooman: Who are some of the poets living and dead that you admire and how do they influence you?

Lorne Daniel: Wow, so many. My early passions were for Dylan Thomas and Yeats. I was captivated by that great rolling Welsh voice of Thomas. A number of poets have been mentors over the years, including Gary Botting, the late Marty Oordt and Glen Sorestad. My friend Peter Christensen was a co- conspirator in our early days, when we started a literary magazine called Canada Goose and edited two poetry anthologies – and Peter’s poetry certainly influenced me.

Al Purdy was not only a great influence but gave me my first big ‘break,’ if you can call it that in the narrow niche of poetry, when he included me in the Storm Warning 2 anthology.

I am currently reading everything I can by American poet Stephen Dunn. Wonderfully subtle and perceptive poems.

AK: What do you encourage new or emerging writers to do to develop their craft?

LD: Well, there are two practices that I think are key for all writers, new or established. Those are to read a lot and to write a lot. Writing is like any other skill – whatever your base talent level, it improves with practice. Daily writing should be the goal. I don’t always achieve that but you have to write to improve.

AK: You are someone who blogs frequently and is social media savvy. How do you see the future of the printed word in verse?

LD: Poetry has a bright future. Concise and powerful images and ideas work well in all media. It’s great to see energy around word slams and spoken word – that harkens back to the oral roots of verse. I think print will continue to be important to many readers, alongside social media and interactive media. Print encourages quiet reflection, which is good for poetry. At the same time, short forms in media like Twitter are stimulating and fun.

AK: In this digital world how has your relationship to poetry changed or evolved?

LD: For one thing, as a reader, it’s easier to find a poet’s work. I can not only find collections in online stores but often at libraries and can find sample poems online. So when I read something I like, I can easily chase down more by that poet. On the creative side, the challenge is to get away from the digital stimuli when writing.

Longhand writing still has a more direct connection to our thoughts and emotions, so I usually draft poetry with pen and paper.

AK: What was the trigger that caused you to revisit work from your previous collections and publish this volume of poetry?

LD: This print book was totally triggered by feedback from social media. Readers of my blog, tweets and Facebook page were discovering some of my poetry for the first time. My earlier books were out of print so it seemed like a good idea to get the works back out to new readers. David Weedmark, who I met through Twitter, jumped in and offered to publish it through Weedmark Publishing.

AK: For me the selections of poems really comes alive with “Rituals.” I’m interested to hear from you if you have certain rituals when you sit down to write verse. How is your way of writing poetry different from you than the other ways you write?

LD: For me, poetry requires a more imaginative and less structured frame of mind than other writing. I prefer to work from a clear space with minimal distractions when starting poetry. Lately, most of my poetry writing is done first thing in the morning – before turning on any computers or media. So my ritual is to clear the desk, make a coffee, perhaps read a poem or two by other writers to prime the pump, and then start in with the blank page.

AK: Why do you think rituals are important and what does it mean to record or write them down?

LD: The older I get the more I realize that we just continually recreate ourselves. I read back through old journals and see all the same concerns and initiatives, five or ten years ago, as I am experiencing now – they just manifest themselves in slightly different ways. Rituals bind us to our history.

AK: “The History of Hands” is a haunting, beautiful poem. Much of your work focuses on memory – of touch and other intimate moments – and always seem to be mapped within a clear geography. Why is location so important?

LD: For me, experience is almost always mapped to a geography, as you say. The external places and spaces are interwoven with the internal emotions and thoughts. I am fascinated by the overlay of time. We experience things in the moment but often it takes the memory of experience to make that experience multi-dimensional.

AK: I’m curious about your writing past – what’s your earliest memory of encountering poetry? Can you remember the first poem you wrote down?

LD: Interesting question. No, I can’t remember the first time I wrote something and called it a poem. In my adolescent and teen years I was always interested in music lyrics. The lyrics were what grabbed me – if they were any good. I grew up when Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and others were bringing out popular music that went far beyond ‘boy loses girl’ lyrics and at the same time my school teachers were introducing me to Yeats and T.S. Eliot. Then I started to discover that we had real, live, poets here in Canada. That was a revelation. I remember reading a poem by the late Red Lane, a poem about western Canada, and sitting bolt upright. You mean you can write about the bush, and the prairies? Somewhere in there, I must have seen the invitation to try that myself. I was writing quite a bit by the time I landed in college.

AK: What’s on your writing horizon?

LD: Two projects. I have started a new series of poems that are inspired by gratitude for everyday experiences. When I say gratitude, I don’t necessarily mean overly precious glorifying. Rather, I am trying to watch the smallest details of what we see, touch, do – the complex little flickers in a facial expression, for example – and to acknowledge their importance in our humanity. So I have a growing folder of first draft poems in that category.

Secondly, I am committed to pulling together, reworking and publishing a “memoir of place” that I have been working on for literally 35 years. It is a braided narrative of western central Alberta’s oilpatch country – what we now call oil patch but which of course has had many different meanings to other people in other times. My book weaves my personal experience in the bush with that of my grandparents, the map maker David Thompson, his wife Charlotte Small, the earlier Peigan tribes, and of course industrial developers.

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Follow Lorne on twitter | Visit his website at LorenDaniel.com

Purchase Drawing Back to Take A Running Jump

Read more interviews with other artists, activists and bold thinkers

A few years ago I saw a poster in a hallway filled with posters at the Red Deer College.  It had a simple question: Have you ever thought of writing a play?  It was a serendipitous moment in my life, to say the least.  The question landed in me with much force.  I had an impression for a story at the time – just a seed – and I didn’t know how to write it.  It wasn’t a novel, it wasn’t even a short story.  It was centred in dialogue.  The question posed on the small 11×14 inch piece of paper helped open the door to solve the riddle that what I needed to write was a play, and it began a whole new chapter in my writing life.

Tanya Ryga is partly to blame!  As co-founder of Scripts at Work in Red Deer and an instructor for 20 years, Tanya has helped to open many such doors for people across Canada.  For me it was by being part of an incredible playwright series in central Alberta that offers opportunity to new and emerging playwrights through workshops and an annual Playwright Competition that for eight years has given writers the privilege to learn from leading Canadian theatre professionals.

If you’ve stopped by my site before, you know I like to ask questions of artists, activists, and bold thinkers.  And so I wanted to pick Tanya’s brain about theatre in central Alberta, the creative process and why she has given much of her career to championing and developing the talent in others.

I connected with her through email in Red Deer, in the lead up to the Scripts at Work annual playwright competition in the 2011/12 Series.

 Andrew Kooman: Who are some of the artists that have most inspired you in your career?

Tanya Ryga: The ‘big picture’ inspirations for me came from those out of reach: Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, William Shakespeare, Tom Waits. But closer to home I’ve been fortunate to know and/ or work with artists who give me day-to-day moments of ‘gasp’ as well. Artists you might know? David More , Glynis Boultbee, Lynda Adams, definitely Larry Reese.

AK:. What do you love about theatre?

TR: Everything. Doing it, reading it, seeing it.

AK: What should people know about theatre in central Alberta that they don’t?

TR: Theatrical activity is thriving. We have more companies doing theatre than ever before – there is always something on. There are setbacks, sure, but theatre companies are very resourceful, exceedingly supportive of each other and the audiences are enthusiastic. The type of theatre available to see is broadening all the time – and that means audiences are wanting choices. In the midst of all the creativity Scripts at Work has emerged to flush out and support the growing number of playwrights in the area.

AK: What first drew you into acting? What drew you into instructing theatre artists?

TR: My father was one of Canada’s foremost playwrights but that wasn’t what did it for me. No, I thought he typed for a living. What hooked me was when Holiday Playhouse (the touring arm of the Vancouver Playhouse) brought a production of Romeo and Juliet to my school. It’s the first time I remember ever seeing a play. At twelve I signed up for summer school with that company and have never stopped doing and learning about theatre. One who loves to learn is eventually lured back to school. I’ve been an instructor at RDC for 20 years.

AK: Tell me about the beginnings of Scripts at Work: why did you start it and with who?

TR: There have always been Acting students who are also writing plays or wanting to write for theatre. During the winter of 2004 with the help of theatre faculty, current students and alumni an evening of brand new short plays was presented on campus to a surprisingly enthusiastic audience. Who knew? The idea for an annual play competition grew from there. Lynda Adams was the founding faculty member and has kept SAW going and growing since then. It has a talented Advisory Board and brings professional dramaturgs and directors to Central Alberta annually to work with our emerging playwrights and local actors. SAW playwrights have had successful productions of their works here and elsewhere plus continue to write for theatre and film.

AK: When I’ve connect with people who’ve had the fortune to work with you or learn from you, they always comment on your generosity and say you’re their biggest encouragement. What motivates you to foster and develop talent?

TR: Gosh. I could be flippant and say ‘compliments like that!’ Teachers are always in a privileged position to encourage and develop others. In the arts, working with others is always about process and creation. Something is being created and there is often no template. It’s so important to thrive in the not knowing and just trust in the talent all around. As for developing that talent, if you can see it in them so will they.

AK: Dramaturgy is a term many people aren’t familiar with. How do you define it and why is it important in the theatre world?

TR: Every province has organizations that provide supports to writers and new plays. In Alberta we have many: Alberta Playwrights Network, Scripts at Work , the Citadel and Banff Playwrights Colony to name a few. Rarely do plays go from creator to production without a dramaturgical process. Mentorship can come from any of these organizations or a dramaturg may be provided by the theatre company who is producing the new play. Together the writer and dramaturg look at every aspect of the play from theme to structure to character arc.

Scripts at Work -- Promotional Photo

A lot of questions are asked to ensure that what the writer is thinking is actually on the page. With an existing play that we are preparing to direct or rehearse we will mine the world of the play and the world of the characters to get a deeper understanding of the work. That process can also be referred to as dramaturgy.

AK: Why is Scripts at Work important for the arts in Red Deer and central Alberta?

TR: SAW has provided opportunities for over 70 playwrights and 150 actors since it began eight years ago. There are workshops such as ‘How to Write a Play’ and ‘Stand And Deliver-for actors. Two playwright Circles are offered where new plays are written, developed or adapted for film under the guidance of a professional dramaturg. SAW is most known for its development of winning plays from the annual playwright competition culminating in staged readings at the Festival of New Plays in Red Deer.

AK: What has surprised you about Scripts at Work over the last 8 years, and where do you see it going in the future?

TR: I’m surprised at the number of people wishing to write for theatre but I’m not surprised at how good the writing is. SAW has thrived due to thousands of volunteer hours and the dedication of those involved humbles and cheers me. Artists from the professional theatre community are happy to come to work with our writers and actors, or serve as jurors reading all the plays submitted to the competition and I’m always surprised and thrilled with this generosity. We get financial support annually from the Alberta Foundation of The Arts and the City of Red Deer, which helps us bring in the professional artists but everything else is done by volunteers and organizers – people who love the theatre.

I see the programs growing. We’ve very occasionally had longer intensives for the full length plays and we’d like to be able to offer more of that.

Something new for us recently is partnering with Central Alberta Theatre to showcase the plays once the SAW phase of development is complete. We dream about having the capacity to fully mount one of the SAW plays one day, but our biggest contribution continues to be encouraging writing.

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About Tanya Ryga: As a long-time instructor in the theatre program at Red Deer College, Tanya Ryga has taught many of the artists who are writing, directing and acting in theatre productions all over Canada and beyond. She received a Women of Excellence Awards for Community Building (2010) from the Red Deer & District Community Foundation for her work with Scripts at Work and two theatre companies: Butt Ugly and BITE: Body Image Theatre Education for which she is the Artistic Director.

To learn more about Scripts at work visit www.scriptsatwork.com

Author Carey Wallace writes:

Discipline is not a mystery. Its elements are so simple they can seem mocking. Put down the extra slice of bread. Run one more mile. Pick up the pen, or brush, or violin. It’s no more complicated in the creative spheres. But it’s every bit as elusive there as it is in the world at large. “I want to make work,” people often confess to me when they discover I’m a working writer. “I just never seem to get to it.”

If you roll in a creative sphere, this is a must read.  I’m surely glad I stumbled upon it. Read the whole thing, “On Discipline” here.

What’s your non-exhaustive list? Here’s mine.  Permit me to add to it later:

G.K. Chesterton |Inspired by his unapologetic apologetics; touched by his romantic and sweeping faith, thrilled by his unadulterated humor and the skill with which he turns an argument on a dime.

Marilynne Robinson | If I could reach into someone’s guts with a story like she did me through Gilead, to churn and hurtle the inner man with such emotional resonance, I could die a happy writer.

William Gibson (the playwright, although what I’ve read of the cyberpunk novelist of the same name I admire) | The moments of revelation he earns, through surprise, in a single line in those plays of his I’ve seen or read depress and school me as a writer.

Annie Dillard | I wish she wrote more, which is both a stupid thing to say and a compliment.  Perhaps she takes to heart the advice of another writer I admire and wish wrote more,

Harper Lee | who said, “I’d rather be silent than be a fool.”  Perhaps the literary world is just better for what they have and have not written.

Anne Carson | Have you read what she does with words?  Over my head with delight.

Charles Dickens | Have you noticed that thus far all the writing men I’ve mentioned are no longer living?  Foreboding.  I’m amazed that he wrote such staggering plots, masterpieces like A Tale of Two Cities, episodically.  That means he wrote the story as it was being serialized!  Don’t act like you’re not impressed.

G. Campbell Morgan | If you read one of his sermons, especially during his time at the Westminster Pulpit, you will know why.  He knew how to till the earth and plant a pregnant seed.

Hey.  Here are two writing men that are alive:

Bill Watterson | Yes. The man of Calvin and Hobbes fame.  Because he is intelligent and hilarious and because he said this: “It’s always better to leave the party early.”

Paul Haggis | Bringing story, actual story, to cinematic audiences.

Oh, here’s a third:

Michael Ondaatje | Gee, Andrew, who doesn’t want to write like a Booker Prize-winning author’s whose work is translated into Academy Award winning films?  Look past the accolades, and read his poetic, visceral work so grounded in the senses.

Okay, I actually have to curb this list and go and write for awhile myself.  But a quick more few:

Paul L. Maier | What I’ve read of his historical fiction captivated and intrigued.

John Donne | (I told you this was in no particular order). Oh to write such surprising and perplexing metaphysical conceits!

Peggy Noonan and Ann Coulter | Because paradox means, certainly, that things –lists included– don’t go feeble at the end.  I admire the thoughtfulness and brazen conviction; the awe and the shock; the tenderness and the sharp edge. Punches that aren’t pulled though they both do not pull punches differently.  Herbal tea and the gin.

There are more, and there are lesser writers too.  But away I go to write, inspired.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3

The last time I was in the hospital the scar set itself much deeper.  It carved its way deeper than my flesh, under the surface of my skin, below muscle and bone.  I remember seeing Marion for the first time after the accident.  She looked at me and couldn’t hold back tears.  Mom either, she cried for hours.  Tess wouldn’t visit.  It was Jay who listened to me and held up the mirror.  I should have cried too.  White gauze bandage wrapped tightly over my skull.  Thin brown hair poked up in spikes by the ears and forehead.  White plaster covered my nose.  I squinted at myself through swollen, pinched eyes.  Red, purple, black.  A patch of tape covered the hole where a tracheotomy tube had pumped air into lungs.  My arms were pulled up by metal wires and were wrapped in plaster, traction to support broken limbs.  A white sheet covered hips, groin, thighs, knees, shins, toes.  Parts of my body I could no longer feel.  A picture of horror, like a mummy rising from its sarcophagus.  Almost laughable.  Almost me.  Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.  I told Jay I’d let him be the first one to sign the cast on my nose.

The nurses said as soon as the casts came off a physiotherapist would get my arms back to normal in no time.  I’d be ready to roll out of there and would never look back.  Ready to take the first baby-steps into a different life.  A different body.

The ward psychiatrist visited daily and told me thoughts of suicide and anger were completely normal.  I asked her, even if I wanted to end my life what could I do, hold my breath?  She scratched a few notes on her clipboard, then told me to talk through the anger, to face the emotional pain.  There would be negative self-talk.  She asked me how I explained the accident, how I made sense of it.  I told her sometimes life is a whiteout, you drive in unfamiliar territory, maybe a little carelessly.  Sometimes you run into barbed wire.  She squinted at me for awhile, then told me to continue to ask the hard questions. How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Show the insides, cry when you need to.  I said she must have done this before.  She frowned, so, I dictated suicide notes to her, and she wrote them down.  She said you have support around you, but a lot of the time you’ll feel like you walk through it yourself.  Then she looked at my legs.  She blushed and said sorry, then she penciled something on her clipboard.

When you inhabit a new body, you have to get used to not doing what you would normally do.  You start to do a few things you’re good at. You practice punch lines, memorize trivia, you write things down.  You hold your breath occasionally, you laugh, you post things on various website message boards, you look at the clock and realize you should have gone to bed hours ago.

The minister said death is the final evil.  Suffering dies with it.  The minister said death has no sting.  Not the bite of barbed wire.  The sudden madness of a trusted dog.  Not the insult of unresponsive synapse.  Sam was buried beside his twin brother who died a few days after their birth.  Here lie Michael and Sam de Boer.  Made into His likeness, Born once to die, Born together again for Glory.  People said it is unfair that some are chosen to die young, that not everyone gets to live this life to a ripe, old age.

* *

Her question still pulses through me.  The day she asked it is my favorite day.  We were walking through the park, hand in hand, silent.  We were in Stanley Park, after visiting the Aquarium.  Marion loved to visit the beluga whales.  We used to laugh at the whiteness of their awkward bodies, press our fingers against the glass to get a sense of their underwater grace.  She could stand there for over an hour, pressed against the glass, watching them turn in the water, smiles set as they rolled effortlessly in the deep.  We walked through the park after visiting the whales and I was thinking about the silence between us, the sound of the grass beneath our feet, the weight of her hand in mine.

She stopped walking at some point and looked at me.  I smiled.  She lifted her left hand in the air and said, “Why do you love me?”

I stood silent for a moment, surprised, and then started to laugh.  I could have said so many things.  I could have told her that I loved her nervous insecurity, the way she bit the corner of her lip unconsciously when she waited for the answer to a question.  I could have told her I loved the way her skin smelt, or the single freckle on her nose, that I wanted to marry her because she walked slightly pigeon toed.

She blushed at my laughter and started to look to the ground, but I wouldn’t let her.  I cupped her chin in my hand, and brushed a wisp of hair behind her ear.  I said, “You give me the grace I need to change.”  It was the most honest thing I have ever said.

She looked at me for a moment, clenched her jaw, and nodded her head.  I pulled her to my side and we continued walking.

I try to write suicide notes, but they don’t end up that way.  I can never write past the first sentence.  Instead, when I face my confinement, the new limitations thrown upon this body, I go walking with her again through that park.  When I wake in the middle of the night and remember I inhabit a body, I let her question pulse through me.  I turn my body so that I face Marion as she sleeps to let her know I wait for her to press herself against me again, feel my pulse, and realize that my blood flows through me with all the underwater grace of those beautiful, white whales.

© 2010 Andrew Kooman
All rights reserved

##

Read Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3

Don’t want to wait to read the rest of the story?  Download the ebook to your e-reader of choice here.

Read Part 1 and Part 2

Marion and I used to dance a lot.  She would joke that dancing was like sex with clothes on, and that ironically it met the approval of her father.  I’ve heard some amputees say that after they lost their limbs they would still itch.  They would go to scratch out the irritation only to scratch at air, dismembered legs, torn off arms.  Their brains just send signals by rote rehearsal.  I didn’t lose any limbs, but after the accident I had similar sensations.  I would be lying in bed, eyes closed, and could feel Marion’s body.  Her chin in the nape of my neck, her breasts pressed into my chest, her hips.  I could feel my arms around her waist, our legs slowly swaying, our bodies dancing.  Then I would open my eyes and feel at thin air, her body absent and separate, turned away from me in our bed.  My brain cheating me with false signals.

I proposed to her that way, dancing.  We were barefoot in the middle of the afternoon, walking through Stanley Park.  A reggae band was busking and I pulled her into my arms and we just started to dance.  I wrapped my arms around her, we circled barefoot, sunlit in clover.  First people watched us, Marion blushing while I laughed, soon others started to dance around us, lost themselves in the music.  I hadn’t planned to ask her to marry me that day, but it just happened.  The question asked itself.

* *

Childhood, adulthood.  A continuum of time interrupted by institutions like university, the Church, marriage, and if you’re lucky, changes in geography.  You grow up in a small rural town and you are the centre of the universe.  The world revolves around you.  Football matches, hockey practices.  In what year did the Catholic Church officially condemn Copernican theory? No one tells you so, you just are, then you move away.

Grade 11.  Sam de Boer died in a snow mobile accident.  Barbed wire fence, a white out, it was a friend’s farm.  He was a devout Calvinist.  It wasn’t supposed to happen.  He was going to graduate then play hockey at University, come home, find a wife, and populate a quarter section with little Calvinists.  That’s how big farm boys dreamed where I went to high school.  School, marriage, children.  Repeat the cycle of infant baptism, catechism, profession of faith.  No one tells you you’re predestined to make these steps into faith, you just take them.

The school couldn’t come to terms with it.  He had his life ahead of him.  Decisions to make. He had places to go.  Uncle Vic says the minute you get on a plane and travel somewhere you realize you’re not the centre of the universe.  You become the anomaly.  People do life differently. You adjust to them.  Chopsticks, foreign greetings, squatty potties.  He says that’s why everyone should have to get in a plane and leave the ground at high velocity.  You think differently, more clearly, you’re forced to come to terms with the fact that the world is bigger than you and your little problems.

I remember being at Sam’s funeral.  I imagined I was the one laying in the coffin, my life cut short, hands folded across my body, listening.  To what people said about me.  To the spin of the sanctuary’s ceiling fans.  To the ministers carefully chosen syllables.  Reflecting on the places I wouldn’t go and the things I wouldn’t do – that’s when I decided to move, how I ended up on the coast.

* *

My first visit to a hospital was for stitches.  I fell off Opa’s tractor.  We were playing hide and seek.  We weren’t supposed to hide in the wheat fields or on farm equipment, but I thought if I got into the machine’s cab I could lie on my back and listen to the crickets sing, make shapes in the clouds, smell the sweet scent of gasoline.  It was the first scar to trace a mark in my flesh. My right knee.  A fall from a field tractor, Lacombe, Alberta. Much of my skin has been mapped out by a history of person, place, thing. A hockey puck above the arc of my right eyebrow, Swift Current, Saskatchewan.  Imprints on my skin.  A thin white line on the knuckle of my index and middle finger when mom closed the car door on my hand.  She cried for hours.

Soft pink tissue covers incisions where dark blood seeped from hidden magenta pools beneath fat, tendons, and muscle.  Imprints left by familiar environments.  We remember the time around scars.

Tante Jo visited Opa’s farm one summer.  She came all the way from Holland.  Her first time to Canada, thirty years after her younger brother immigrated by boat with a young wife, five blue eyed children, a daughter yet to be born.  She brought with her a different language, the memory of another continent pockmarked by the violence of war.  She came with calf length dresses, gold broaches, colorful silk shawls.  She left with a mid-calf plaster cast.  One summer evening after a picnic on Opa’s land she was carrying leftovers into the house from the front porch.  Digger, dad’s dog, went crazy and bit her Achilles tendon.  Severed it right in half.  She fell through the screen door.  Baked potatoes and cobs of corn spread all over the porch mixed with blood and her agony.

Read Part 1 and Part 2

© 2010 Andrew Kooman
All rights reserved

##

Don’t want to wait to read the rest of the story?  Download the ebook to your e-reader of choice here.

Read Part 1

I made my quarterly appearance with my internet support group today.  A group of SCI’s who I’m supposed to relate to.  What areas of the body do the Sacral spinal nerves supply? It’s part of my continuing “healing” and “therapy.”  Marion thinks it will move me away from Prozac, but its having the opposite effect.  If anyone should be online it should be her.  Who wants to sit in front of the computer and talk about body functions for a few hours?  Condom catheters, colostomy bags, laxatives; chatting with spinal cord injuries: depressing.  Be reduced to the body functions you can perform.  You aren’t your job; you are your body parts.  If I want to shoot the shit, I’ll talk with Uncle Vic.

He went to Asia to find Mao, to just “figure it out.”  What did he discover?  How much he loved living in the West.  Beef, potatoes and personal space.  What did he find?  Green tea, chopsticks, measurable population densities.  The thing he missed the most was normal English.  Conjugated verbs and personal pronouns.  Chronological syntax.  The thing he missed the most was the western toilet.  Smooth white porcelain, running water.  Hand soap.  Privacy.  In Thailand he said if he wanted to relieve himself he would hold it in as long as he could.  Pinch both cheeks tightly together, sit on fence posts and do yoga breathing.  He probably had the strongest sphincter on the mainland.  More anal retention than Joe Clark.  At least until the bug did a jihad on his system.  When he had bowel control he’d wait until he passed by an international bank, a franchise restaurant, a foreign embassy, then he’d let it go.  Liquidate his assets.  Represent his country, perform the national unity function.  But the bug got so bad, even when there was nothing in him his body would still expel waste. Stomach lining, bile, miscellaneous liquids.  So he’d have to find a toilet and find it fast.  Squatty potty.  That’s what travelers call the toilets there.  Holes dug into the ground.  He says you see a lot of old women in Asia who are severely bowlegged.  He was told it’s because they work all their lives, stomping rice in paddies, working in vegetable fields, squatting to cook over woks set on the ground.

I suggested that maybe among Asian women there may be a secret sorority of cowgirls that conceal guns, walk like men with leather chaps, who ride horse all day and play poker at night.  He just looked at me funny.  You live in forty-degree heat with one hundred percent humidity eating a simple diet of rice, tofu and vegetables and see how much time you spend squatting over a toilet hole.  Your legs might bow too.

He describes it at first as pain.  Sure, the acid burns your intestinal tract.  The soft tissue of your colon.  How many rings are around Uranus? But what really hurts are the kneecaps, the calf muscles.  You have to go to Asia with reasonably strong thigh muscles.  And even then you have to wait until there’s no doubt that you’re going to actually go, which for him wasn’t usually the problem.  You can’t squat and then wait, because your legs cramp out.  You fall over and then you crap yourself.  I asked him how I’d make it over there.  He said I’d be screwed.  He said he can’t figure out how we manage to do the job here, even with the metal hand railing.

He said that in Mongolia it’s even worse.  There’s flush toilets but they’re all in reverse.  The Russians did everything backwards.  Just ride a Russian vehicle or visit a Russian-made apartment.  They came into Mongolia and dropped towns in the middle of nowhere.  He said he’d be surprised if the Russians crap out of their backends because of what they sound like when they talk.  No better stream can we look, should issue from your idle brain, Melastromus. A Mongolian toilet puts a new twist on Lacan’s mirror stage.  The hole is at the front of the bowl, below a ledge, so it just waits for you on the ledge staring up at you once you’ve finished.  One big brown separation anxiety.  After you do the big business Vic says you find a bucket to fill with water and then you dump it onto the ledge.  If you’re lucky it will cooperate with you and slip down into the hole.

Looking at your feces on a reverse-flush Russian toilet is the closest thing Mongolia has to contemporary art.  Vic thinks post-modern art is crap.  Somewhere between inkblots and the dark ages.  All that garbage about self-actualization.   Free and creative states.  Crap, crap, more crap.  Post-mortem crap is art.  If it actually leaves the body.  Unlearn bowel function.  Release control.  Do adults in diapers get to learn to walk?

Spend a year in Asia and when you come home you’ll be able to take a dump anywhere.  Tim Horton’s, the public library, even at large sport stadiums.  You spend a few weeks in the hospital and you can’t even remember how to wipe your own ass.  What are the five levels of need in Maslow’s triangle? Feed me, shelter me, change my diaper.  You drop all the way down to the bottom of the pyramid.  But what falls down must rise up, right?  Murphy’s law of optimistic antithesis.

The first day I got home I was determined to show Marion I could take care of myself.  You pretend you’re independent.  You don’t want to be a liability.  I chose my own television station.  I wrote a few letters.  I put dishes in the dishwasher.  Marion asked me to wear adult diapers just in case.  I told her diapers were for senile women in nursing homes who drank hard liquor most of their lives.  I was going to go cold turkey.  No catheters, no bedpans, definitely no diapers.

Mounting a toilet for the first time is like mounting your first horse.  You just want to end up sitting on it.  It doesn’t matter how you get there.  First you wheel yourself beside the toilet and turn your armrest down.  It’s best to get as close to the toilet as possible.  Mounting a toilet is like trying to do your first inverted pushup.  In high school we used to have competitions after gym class to see who could do the most pushups.  Someone would always end up with their head against the ground, feet eight bricks up, for inverts.  I could never even do one.  Gravity works against you.  Your brain doesn’t know what to do.  Your hands push against the ground for lift but your biceps, shoulders and traps get heavier, move toward the ground, not away.  All your weight moves into your head.  One hundred and eighty plus pounds of muscle, bone, and blood vessels congest between your temples.  You push against your weight until the veins on your forehead swell, your face turns red, you collapse on the ground.  I had similar results with my first toilet mount.

With one hand on an armrest, one on the edge of the toilet seat, you push yourself up.  Your chest muscles pinch your sternum, your triceps shake, you feel tendons rub against bones in your wrist you never knew you had.  You have to slide your body up the back of the wheelchair.  You fully extend your arms, elbows lock, you push all the weight below your wrists.  The blood in your hands centres around the fingertips, knuckles turn white, fingers ache.  You’ve moved an inch above the chair.  In one movement you need to swing your body over onto the white porcelain throne.  It’s like giving yourself the birthday bumps.  The younger you are, the better.  You need finesse, you need accuracy.  You wish you trained as a gymnast on the parallel bars.

Before the body transfer, I untied the drawstring of my pants and worked them down to my ankles.  Neglecting to lock the wheels of my chair in place was my biggest mistake.  First you tell yourself it’s mind over body.  My muscles ached, my veins were swelling, but I was an inch off the chair.  Then it was cold bathroom tiles.  The scent of urine and saliva.  White, hairy legs, together at the knees, caught inside cotton jogging pants and gray woolen socks.  A splash of cold water as arms flailed for something solid to push against, to prop up a fallen body.  It can never be body versus mind.  Body will win.  You’ll crap yourself, pants down, in the fetal position on a cold bathroom floor.  You head to the bathroom in a wheelchair and you realize you inhabit a body.

Read Part 1

© 2010 Andrew Kooman
All rights reserved

##

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Mephibosheth: Part 1

This was a suicide note, but then I remembered crying.  It was a true story.  I thought the little actress was the little girl.  I cried because the doctor said she would get better, because she was about the same age as me.  It was probably the first made-for-TV movie I ever watched.    She had a strange disease.  No one knew what it was.  It was the mid-seventies, so television writers could pass off the disease as some mysterious condition that science couldn’t explain, in the days before kids had HIV, or Tay-Sachs. Then, kids were scared by kids coughing up blood, even if the blood only showed up in black-and-white. I remember coughing a few days later before going to bed.  My mom turned my hand over and looked at my palm.  She didn’t say anything, just turned the palm over slowly, eyes wide, to check for spots of black-and-white blood.

You want your own tragedy to have its own TV movie, because you want proof it’s sad enough.  You want to know who’s gonna cry.  My movie plays in my mind on a loop, the same images all over again.  I can remember what I ate for breakfast that morning, and what I ate for breakfast the morning after.  But somehow in the midst of bursting glass and police sirens I’ve forgotten the details in between.  Wheaties with brown sugar and a hot-cross bun. Who was the first athlete to be featured on a Wheaties box? Then sugar water in a bag.

I stepped outside of time that morning before the accident, stepped outside the continuum of my life.  I was at the breakfast table and sensed the world had changed.  Time had stopped but I had not.  Everything around me was frozen.  The curtains slowly breezing.  The neighbor outside trimming the hedge.  The morning radio newscast.  Only I moved, I alone, when everything else was motionless.  I picture myself there now, at that table, spoon in hand, can smell the scent of pine cones and grass in the air.  That’s the last memory as my former self.  One quiet moment I spent unmarked by time, sitting at the table eating cereal.

After breakfast I pulled out of the driveway, maybe a little carelessly.  I was late for work and then it was tires squealing, broken glass, and complete silence.

I can remember now the moment of decision, of entering my body for the first time. How I was above myself lying on the gurney.  You see yourself but you are a stranger to yourself.  Not bound by the law of gravity.  At that point free to observe the tubes pump fluids in.  Free to watch what tubes the fluid comes out.  It is weightlessness.  You don’t need to breathe because breath suspends you.  You are outside, unhomed. You’re a spectator.  You hover.  You’re unmade.  You aren’t defined because in that moment you aren’t contained.

Slowly I became aware that the man I watched was me.  Time was still again.  Only I moved in the blur of stilled motion.  I see myself lying there.  Blood covering my hands.  Nothing in the room is moving.  The hospital staff.  The ceiling fan.  The graph on the heart rate monitor.  I close my eyes and imagine blue-white sky.  I hear my name called and turn toward the voice.

Then it is ceiling tiles, the throb of my pulse in my ears.  A blur of surgical gloves, round eyes behind plastic glasses, slanted eyebrows, thick eyelashes.  You hear strange voices call out your name.  You don’t know where they come from.  The heads looking down at you have blue face masks where mouths should be.  You just stare.  That was how it was when I entered my body for the first time.  Unfamiliar faces, too much eye shadow, scratchy hair bursting from swollen pores.  That was my first in-body experience.  The last footsteps I ever made were back into my own body.

**

A guy Jay works with told him about this fat couple.  They were so obese that sex became a physical impossibility.  What do you get when you cross an elephant with a rhino? They were whales, one-tonners.  Their fatness interfered with their bodies’ ability to come together and join as one flesh.  There was too much space between them.   Food was their pleasure.  All they could do was eat.  All they ever would do was eat.  So they decided to bring their pleasure into the bedroom.  They made love to each other one at a time.  They would take turns, undressing each other.   One at a time they’d slowly untie the laced string at the back of each other’s Muu Muu.  Trace a finger along the crisscross of string then with one hand press the string into the skin while the other hand slowly pulled it free from the cloth.

If the wife undressed the husband first, she would lie him face down on his steel reinforced bed, arms above head.  She would pull his Muu Muu up along the surface of his body.  Ankles, calves, hamstrings, the enormous flesh of his buttocks, lower back, shoulders, his already exposed neck.  Then, with his cooperation, roll him over to expose the other half of his body.  Only the thin cloth of his Muu Muu between her hands and his shins, thighs, the mound of his stomach, nipples and chest.  With both sides of the clothing pulled up to his neck she would slip the fabric over his head, cupping his armpits, his biceps.  She would let the clothes fall to the floor, interlock her fingers with his, lean forward and kiss his forehead.

Then he would rise and stand beside her.  Hip against hip, they would tango over to her steel reinforced bed and he would lay her down on her back, pull her Muu Muu across her flesh, expose the curves, the crevasses, roll her over, the heaps and mounds of skin, interlock fingers and kiss her forehead.  He would return to his bed.  She would stay on hers.  And, backs to each other, they would reach for the basket of food prepared beside their beds.  She loved chocolate so he would take eclairs, mints, chocolate-covered cashews and hide them in the folds of his skin.  With a finger rub mousse into the crease of his groin.  Oreo cookies under the flap of his right breast, chocolate caramels behind each knee.  Glossettes in the flab of his biceps.

He loved smoked meat, occasionally dried fruit.  She would plant smoked turkey between her breasts, slabs of beef jerky in the cellulite rolling her thighs.  Papaya inside the lines of her buttocks, dried pineapple in the fullness of her armpits.  Rings of apple over her ears and toes.  Hickory smoked venison between her neck and collarbone.  Raisins and honey in her navel.

When the food was hidden, the wife would turn off the table light between them.  The husband would go to his wife’s bed and begin his search.  Sniff, taste, consume the hidden ecstasy folded into the furrows of her soft skin.  The wife submitting to the exhalation of his breath, the force of his tongue and teeth against fruit, meat and her flesh. Then it was her turn to mine the buried pleasure.  Love was a feast where their spirits could leave their bodies and meet together in the air.

Their love transcended the function of body parts.

© 2010 Andrew Kooman.  All Rights Reserved.

##

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I was asked to share at the first annual Gateway Christian School Alumni Chapel about Hearing God’s Voice, a chapel filled with energetic students from grade four to grade twelve, some of their parents, their teachers, and a dozen or more alumni.  As I prepared, I started to think  a lot about prayer.  I believe prayer is essential to the life of faith, the way that we stay deeply connected with God.

I asked the questions, “How many of you have heard of Facebook?” and  “How many have a Facebook account?”  Most of the four hundred kids’ hands in the gymnasium went into the air.  Most of the children’s parents knew they did, and most checked their accounts at least once a day.

I have a Facebook account too. To give you a sense of how cool or uncool I am, I have about 400 hundred friends. Some of my friends are people I’ve never met, and probably never will, which might tell you something about me, or the social networking site.

To be honest, I resisted having one for a long time because at first the concept seemed weird (Do I really need to know when someone walked their dog?).  Facebook also made me uncomfortable (Who will be reading what I say… what if I don’t know them… is it an invasion of privacy?).  And thirdly, I didn’t know what to say (Will people think what I have to say is stupid, and will any of it matter?).

Even though I thought (and still think) there are things about it that are weird and uncomfortable, and, even though I don’t always know what to say, I signed up.

And I’m happy I did. Having had the  opportunity to travel all over the world (and hoping for more of the same) through Facebook I can stay connected to friends in Africa, and Europe, and the Middle East, and Asia, and the United States, Mexico, in Red Deer and anywhere and everywhere in between (except perhaps now in Pakistan).

What I like is that I can see photographs of friends, I can post updates about what I’m doing and where I’m going. And it’s a great way to know what my friends are thinking, and doing, and where my friends are going too.

But I didn’t show up at the chapel to toot Facebook’s horn, nor is that why I’m posting this ditty here.   The whole point is that I think the quintessential networking site of our time is a great metaphor to understand prayer.

Most everyone has a Facebook account. Some of us are on Facebook a lot. I know some people who are on it so much, it seems, I don’t know if they do anything else. They have iPhones or Blackberries, and they’re always Facebooking or texting. They text and Facebook, in fact, without ceasing.

Saint Paul, in an important letter to an upstart new church plant in Europe in the first century, tells believers to pray without ceasing. It’s an exhortation that always seemed a little lofty, if not unrealistic.  However, after spending an afternoon with my nephews and their friends who seem to be able to text and chat without ceasing, it doesn’t seem like as much of a stretch anymore.

We get on Facebook because we want to chat with our friends and connect. I started to imagine what it would be like if, with the same regularity, veracity, or interest we had Prayer Accounts and started to log into God during the week.  Do we have Prayer Accounts?  A good question.  And I suspect many do and that most who do not encounter reservations like the ones I had before I started my Facebook account.  It seems weird (Who am I talking to?)  It’s uncomfortable (Can I be honest and can I expect a response?). And if those two hurdles are cleared, what do we say?

Therefore my question for the school and for anyone reading this post:

If God had a Facebook account, would you be one of his friends?  What would you post on his wall? What events would you invite him to? And perhaps more importantly, what would God write on your wall?

Facebook is a cool metaphor for prayer, which is one of the main ways that God speaks to us. God, I believe, speaks to us in a lot of ways – through nature, through pastors and teachers, through the Bible, through each other.

Yet prayer is a main way God speaks. It is a conversation: We speak to God and he responds to us; God speaks to us and we respond to him.

If God had a Facebook account, what would he write on your wall?

I’m certain of three things, though it’s not an exhaustive list.  The first thing God would write on your wall is that He Loves You and has good plans for you.  God shows his love through parents, by giving health, by providing for the food we eat and the clothes we are wearing – giving us the faculty and the means to acquire them -  through teachers and through other people in our lives who want the best for us (to name but a few ways).

God would also write that He Loves People.  The ones we encounter every day and those across the world.   Our classmates and colleagues, teachers and students, brothers and sisters, our parents – people not always so easy for us to love.  And he loves people we don’t know: leaders of countries, the rich and the poor, the old and young.

The third thing I’m certain God would write on your Facebook wall is that he wants you to love yourself too, and to love the people around you and the people who you don’t know, near and far – by serving them like God serves us, by being kind and generous like he is to us, and by doing what is right.

That’s the basic stuff, the public information written on all the walls of any person with an account.

But there’s private information too.

You know how in Facebook you can write on people’s walls, but you can also send people a message that no one else can see?  This is what I like best: sending friends notes to talk to them personally. I’ll write my friends in Malaysia and ask them about their lives, how I can pray for them, share memories or jokes that I don’t want everyone else to see.  In the same way, God has messages for each of us. It’s private and it’s personal.

The messages concern things others can’t tell us or things we can’t really ask anyone else about.   Answers to questions we might have about the future, concerns we have about our families, ourselves.  Our fears.  They are things we don’t feel comfortable to share publicly.  Maybe it is the sin we struggle with, or the things that have hurt us where there is just too much pain.

I think that’s a really fine picture of prayer: private messages to God that only the person knows about.  Prayer, all of a sudden, doesn’t seem so far off or strange.

Before the days of Facebook, Christ once told a crowd of people how they should pray:

“Whenever you pray, go into your own room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:6).

That’s a surprising verse.  We live in a time when not much is private any more. Facebook is great, but it can make us feel like everyone can or should know everything about us all the time.

Today I think it is important to remember that God wants time with us and he wants to be in conversation with us individually and in a way that he is in conversation with no one else.

Do you take time to send messages to God? Do you take time to be alone with him?

The secret to life, I believe, is to spend time in secret with God.

One of the most important things I’ve learned in my life, out of all the things I’ve learned when I was a student in Red Deer at Gateway, or in high school, or at College or University, or from friends and family, or from all my travels around the world, are the words a friend and teacher said to me:

“Andrew, there’s no substitute for a life lived with God.”

I believe that is true. It’s where we  get our strength.  It’s where we get our power.  It’s where we get our faith and hope, the answers we need, the words we will share, the creative ideas, and the energy to do what’s right.  All by spending time alone with God.

Be a true friend of God. You’re never too young or old to be one. You’re never to cool or uncool to be God’s friend. You’re never to rich or poor. You’re never too happy or sad. You can always be God’s friend and you can share anything with God. And he will share everything with you.

God is real. He is the most interesting and important person in the world.

Have a prayer account with him. Send him messages, and take time to be quiet and alone with him so that you can receive the words and the messages that he has for you.  It will make all the difference in your life.

##

The above post was adapted from Andrew’s address to the students and alumni at the Gateway Christian School in Red Deer, at the first annual Alumni Chapel on 27 May, 2010.

St Matthew and the Angel 1635-40, a painting by Guido Reni.

In 2004 when I was working in Asia teaching in the School of Biblical studies, because of my constant time studying and reflecting on Scripture, I had many questions about the work for the original authors.  I don’t know how long it took, but I finally built up the courage to hack out a letter to the gospel writer St. John and ask him a few questions that had been brewing somewhere in my subconscious for a time.

To my surprise, John responded with an email, and suggested we sit down for a talk.  We did.  That experience not only changed my life, but opened the door to similar conversations with each of the gospel writers.  Oh the places we went.  I asked them a lot of questions: about the Gospel, suffering, cyborgs, feminism, literature, the F-word, meaning and language and more.  The interviews turned into a book-length manuscript The Gospel Writers Meet: Conversations with Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, that I hope to publish somewhere, somehow in the  future.  It’s a collection of conversations about their writing in the present day, and includes some of their latest poetry and literary work as well.

The following is an excerpt from a detailed conversation I had with St. Matthew on a balcony overlooking the ocean at a fine establishment in a beloved Malaysian city.

AK: I’m always interested to pick the brain of other writers. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you some questions about writing.

MT: Of course.

AK: The life of a writer is a lonely journey so it can be nice to have some fellowship with others along the way.

MT: Such fellowship is essential.

AK: I’m interested to hear what you have to say about the writing life.    What advice do you have for young or aspiring writers?

MT: Be careful what you write and what you wish for.  You never know how many people will read the finished result. I say that partly in jest, but I do mean it.

AK: Do you think about an audience when you sit down to write?

MT: Of course I do.  Every one does.  You have to.  Now, you don’t want to think too much about audience response or else you’ll never really write.  But you need to consider audience.  You’re writing to be read otherwise you wouldn’t have picked up your pen.  You have to think about what interests people, what interests you.  I always tell young people there is one important rule.  Sit down and write. Make time for it, be jealous for that time and protect it.  Writing is a discipline.  Don’t sit and wait for that moment of inspiration.  You’ll wait your whole life.  Be thankful for the times when the inspiration comes.  Otherwise, be disciplined: read books, study other forms — painting, music, drama, experiment.

AK: This might seem a strange question to ask, but I think it is relevant.  Do you think Virginia Woolf’s statement that the writer must “kill the angel in the house” applies to all writers, not just women?

MT: Yes, to a degree.  I think there is a location of courage and honesty any writer worth her weight in words must write from.  If you care too much what people will think about you or what you say, then you’ll be handicapped and frustrated.  I think it is important to make a habit of not censoring yourself and writing what is inside you.  But I would say it’s more a matter of inviting the Spirit then killing the angel.  God can handle every good or dark thing inside of us, no thought is unknown or surprising to him.  He’s heard it all.  I think it’s always safe to write honestly.

AK: Your gospel, which we call by your name, was written to a Jewish audience.  Since our Lord’s life and ministry on earth, the question about his true identity has been a topic of heated debate, especially among Jews.  How was your work received?  You must have received a wide range of feedback.

MT: Now there’s an understatement. (Laughter).  The question about Jesus’ identity will always be a hot and contentious topic among us Jews.  Before I wrote the book there were riots in Rome over Chrestus, over this very question about the Messiah.  Claudius, the Emperor at the time was so frustrated that he expelled us from Rome.  My people know how to argue, and argue for good reason. There’s too much at stake with the coming of the Messiah.  I’ve had some fantastic debates and shed not a few tears because of my gospel.

AK: Did it have the impact you desired it to have?

MT: Oh, I had no clue what would happen.  I wrote with the desire to see my brothers and sisters believe that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah.  So many of us were too blind to see it.  I admit surprise that the gospel is so oft read outside of the Jewish world.   I praise God that it has moved people to faith and obedience throughout the centuries. And am thankful that both Jews and Gentiles have received it.

AK: I’m interested in the audience you had in mind as you wrote the gospel.

MT: My original audience, the first people to read my account were men and women, little orphans without sight, groping blind in the darkness of their sin, called to be children of light.  My audience had a destiny that they were trying to fulfill in their own righteousness, and they were falling short of it in their efforts at an outward form of godliness.

Something that amazes me about our race, and the human race in general, is that with all the evidence of our sin and moral failure before us, yet we are able to deny it.  And, though the truth stand in front of us, we are able to deny it also.  What stubborn, hard hearts we have.  That is why I included the history of Israel in the genealogy recorded in the book.  Any honest Jew reading the text would have to come to terms with the good, the bad, and the ugliness of his history.  Any seeker of truth would be confronted, face to face, with the stubbornness and the sin of his race.

AK: How do you respond to accusations that you are anti-Semitic?

MT: Those accusations hurt me deeply, because they are so far from the truth.  I understand how Paul felt when he wrote the Roman believers and declared he would be willing to be accursed if only he could save his own people.  Please understand me, my goal was not to condemn or discourage, but to honestly remind the reader of their tendency to disobey.  It amazes me that Jesus, as a child was taken back into Egypt, and in a few short years would retrace his people’s steps.  And, once and for all, not only symbolically, but truly and finally, he did all the work required to release his people for good from the bondage of slavery.  Let the reader understand, let the reader understand.  Jesus undid all the shame of our race.

The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew 1599-1600 Oil on canvas, 323 x 343 cm Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome

To be fair to the audience I wrote to, I must remind you of the humanness of their own story.  Many of the readers were familiar with the events surrounding the Messiah’s birth.  Wise men, a mysterious star, angels and kings, fear, conspiracy and murder.  This was the stage onto which Jesus was born.  Whether your average Jew knew the story of the Christ or not, he had heard rumors.  All of Israel heard rumors of the birth of a king. It may seem odd that their initial reaction was fear, but you might be afraid also, if your heavy-handed king now had a rival for power.  Judea was an incubator for power-hungry Jews.  There were life and death consequences for the people whenever someone claimed to be king or Messiah.  Remember that Rome, ultimately, had rule in Judea: Herod was a pawn of a greater player.  For any citizen or subject of Rome to claim kingship was high treason, a crime punished with the most severe form of public execution.

There were direct social and political consequences at Jesus’ arrival on earth.

AK: Such as –

MT: Well, many of my readers grew up remembering every year, the day their son or brother or cousin was brutally murdered by Herod and his men.  I have great sympathy for these readers, who, on reading the account of Jesus’ life, from birth to rebirth, had to wrestle with the fact that because of his advent on earth, their cousins and brothers and sons were murdered.

As if believing in a crucified Nazarene were not difficult enough, they were asked to believe in someone that their own children or cousins or brothers had died in the place of, at a very young age.  The arrival of Jesus on earth was life-altering.  For some, it was in a very costly way.

AK: Did you ever talk to Jesus about the deaths of all those children?

MT: I didn’t.  I never asked Jesus how he felt when his parents told him the story of their dramatic flight to Egypt.   It was something I thought of later.  I do wonder how he felt when he learned that as an infant he escaped the sword, and all the other boys his age died.

AK: How do you resolve these cruel facts?

MT: Not without compassion.  Not without a broken heart.  The impact of heaven colliding with earth left casualties.  The consequences of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection are, at times, brutal and damaging.  But not only.  The reader, like any other Jew, like any other human being, is called by God to see.  To see that the consequences of the sin that Adam and his race endorsed are devastating.  To see that the effect of sin was vicious and terrible to all mankind, but even more so to God.  But, to see that sin, ultimately, would be ravaged and devastated by Christ.  The advent of Jesus damages the hardness of the human heart.  The account that I wrote was and still is, for some, a difficult account to read.  Sobering and painful but full of hope if there are ears to hear and eyes to see.

AK: What are your hopes as people read your work today?  Have they changed as kingdoms have emerged and passed away, or as cultures have taken on different shapes and sizes?  What would you say to your audience today, which is primarily non-Jewish?

MT:  (Silence for a few minutes).  Originally, I challenged my readers to be honest about their life, honest about the sin they could not hide and the righteousness that on their own they could not achieve.  I still feel the same.

I hope my words give some insight and that they challenge readers, whatever time they read the gospel in, to think about their lives.  As they read, they should be faced with the ugliness of their own sin, their innate inability to measure up with God’s holy standard of perfection.  They should confront the sadness and pain left in this world because of sin.  That may be unfair.  That may not be comfortable.  That is reality.

The gospel message cannot and does not deny the bitterness and sorrow of life on earth.  However, it is the good news, because it offers comfort and healing in the midst of all of life’s pain.  I hope they come to terms with that as they read, and in the reading, find they are amazed by our Lord.

AK: Matthew, I don’t want to stop here, but I have to.  Thank you, it’s been such a pleasure.

MT: You’re most welcome.

##

Portions of The Gospel Writers Meet appeared in the 2006 edition of Rock & Sling which can be viewed here.

Other interviews with Andrew and figures from Scripture:

• Andrew interviews Queen Bathsheba
• Andrew talks with Solomon

© 2010 Andrew Kooman

All Rights Reserved.