in yesterday’s sunday paper, the Peanuts comic strip has snoopy at his roof-top typewriter, and this is what he types: “it was a dark and stormy night / suddenly, a shot rang out. a door slammed. the maid screamed / suddenly a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! / while millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury / meanwhile, on a small farm in kansas, a boy was growing up… / {PART II} / “in part two, i tie all of this together…”

i think snoopy and i write in much the same way. some people tell me that when i write i seem to be all over the place but then i bring it all back together at the very end in a way they don’t expect. reading my blog is much like an m. night shyamalan film in that way, except this is less visually stimulating and lacks much of m. night’s brilliance. otherwise, the two of us are peers.

i know i tend to write the way i think (which is, in turn, probably similar to the way i speak, except that when i write my word choice is slightly more refined and probably a good deal wittier than anything i can pull off at the spur of the moment). when i write i follow a train of thought that makes perfect sense in my head, but i can see how it could seem a bit like wandering.

when i write, i hope that readers will be able to get past the lines of ink on the paper, as if those things didn’t even exist, and instead feel more like they have entered a conversation or a story.

sometimes when i’m hanging out with friends, the topic of discussion will come to be something quite ridiculous, like something out of seinfeld, and i will wonder how we came to this point where we would be talking about something so strange. i’ll then set out to retrace the thoughts and words that led us to our conversational location, and in so doing i’ll discover interesting topical bridges and marvel at how seemingly unrelated topics actually tie in quite nicely. i think a lot of people can relate to this sort of thing, and in that way, i hope that my style of writing is more lifelike and believable than some more well-polished works with proper transitions and guidelines and all - you know, the kinds of things that would make english teachers proud.

i was at a church conference in atlanta a year and a half ago, and the conference was jam-packed with solid speakers giving solid messages and it felt a lot like trying to drink from a fire hydrant (which, i suppose, was fitting since this was, after all, the thirsty conference). in addition to main sessions we could choose from quite the array of breakout sessions. one day i opted to attend a seminar led by david crowder, which had a very telling title: “David Talks With Many People At Once About Various Stuff.” this particular breakout appealed to me in part because my head was spinning and i was ready for some cotton candy instead of steak - something fluffy that i wouldn’t need to chew on.

despite david’s insistence that our time would surely be better spent at any other seminar that day, a crowd of us stayed and sat through an hour of rambling that was basically made up of comical, yet totally disconnected stories. i’m sure a lot of those who stayed regretted doing so, but hey, they couldn’t say they weren’t warned. but then, in the final five minutes of his talk, david brilliantly brought it all together - how the neighborhood bully and the automatic toilet flushers and the power outage at the holiday inn and the ancient chinese secret all tied together. there was a method to the madness after all. it all now made sense in such a coherent and beautiful way that i almost got choked up. almost.

in my life experience, God seems to do that sort of thing all the time. all kinds of things happen to you in life, both good and bad. life may seem at times chaotic and at other times, mundane. you may wonder what the point of it all really is. you may wonder what God is doing behind the scenes when it seems He is doing nothing at all, or you may even question His very existence. but then when you’re just about sure it is all disconnected and meaningless - all these things in your life - God ties it all together for you and it begins to make sense and you realize that God is a genius after all, even more than a god who would keep everything orderly and manageable and easily understandable in the first place. if even what appears chaotic or mundane is being orchestrated by a sovereign, loving God, it sort of gives you a reason to trust Him, through the good times and the bad, you know? this is the sort of thing that will really choke you up if you think about it because even more than a goofy breakout session with david crowder, God’s ways are beautiful.

i don’t claim divinity by any means, nor even genius status by humanity’s rather finite standards, but in some small way i hope my writing can be an echo of what God is doing, what He has done, and what He will do in my life, and even in yours.

and if that means being ok with a life that seems (for now) pretty random, a life that lacks proper transitions and sentence structure and capitalization - a life that doesn’t seem to flow nicely, that even seems chaotic or mundane, so be it.

speaking of which, one time in guatemala…

(the following is adapted from part of a journal entry composed yesterday at the borders bookstore in lancaster).

i just finished reading a book by douglas coupland called polaroids from the dead, and towards the tail end of the thing he says something that sums up an idea that has been rattling around in my head a little bit as of late: “it has been said that as animals, one factor that sets us apart from all other animals is that our lives need to be stories, narratives, and that when our stories vanish, that is when we feel lost, dangerous, out of control and susceptible to the forces of randomness.”

here at borders i sit in the cafe area along the front wall, which, like barnes & noble (my regular writing spot), is composed mostly of glass. at the table in front of me there are two people, a man and a woman. i’d say she’s in her late twenties and he is in his thirties, judging by the sparse but slighty noticeable specks of grey on his hair ends and the fact that he is wearing a sweater vest.

i have my headphones on, so i don’t know what they’re talking about at this table in front of me, but there are plenty of hand movements and laughs and good listening skills. i’d say they’re enamored with each other. i see a ring on her left ring finger, but i can’t tell from here if it has any engagement/marital significance. i haven’t gotten a good look at his hands, as his back is to me, but i’d wager they’re not married. rather, i’d presume they are on a date, and one of their first with each other at that. they just still seem to be riding a wave of infatuation involving a fair share of charm, optimism and possibility.

i’d like to make clear that when i say i detect infatuation, i’m not demeaning their (budding) relationship in any way. they both seem confident, laid-back-yet-driven, and i think they both have a good head on their shoulders. but even these types of people probably start off with infatuation i’d imagine, before they move on to the deeper stuff like love and respect and faithfulness.

they both seem to be enjoying the company of the other, and being the communication guru that i am, i’d say that judging by their interaction, they are both hoping there will be more dates where this one came from. honestly, i wish them the best, i really do. i wish them many years of love and i hope they’ll still be laughing together at cafe/bookstores fifty years from now (that is, if cafe/bookstores are still around in fifty years and haven’t gone the way of the buffalo and the drive-in movie by that time). if you ask me, i think these two here in front of me have between them what it takes to keep the flame alive.

i often find myself doing this - forming narratives for those who cross my paths if only in passing. i did it earlier today when stopped behind a schoolbus. a girl, probably no more than eight or nine, got off the bus and ran to her mother who waited at the end of the driveway and they hugged like she was a soldier coming home from battle and i began to wonder what sorts of things the mean kids had said to the poor girl during school and that sort of thing. but then the flashing red lights on the back of the bus stopped flashing and i gradually switched from the clutch to the gas pedal and as i passed the driveway i noticed smiles on their faces, so i suppose it would be safe to say that this mother and this daughter have a good relationship, and the bullies preyed on someone else today.

this same urge that leads me to construct narratives about people in cafes, and about mothers and daughters in driveways, i’d suppose, is also what leads me, all too often, to cast negative stereotypes. i like to think that based on the very surface-level and perhaps quite coincidental observations i make about people that i can connect the dots and figure them out, much like an astronomer takes five random stars and acts like he sees a bear or a vacuum cleaner in the sky. it is really a pretty ridiculous undertaking, to say the least, to try to fill in so many blanks and assume you have come to a legitimate conclusion the way i do.

i say this because in the time it has taken me to write the above paragraph, that couple in front of me - the man and the woman on a date, full of butterflies and infatuation - stood up, walked over to the trash can to throw out their cups and napkins and things, and walked out the door. in so doing, i caught a glimpse of his hand and he wears a wedding ring after all. i am now concluding that they are indeed married (because people having an affair don’t meet at borders for a couple of hours, sitting at a big window, where they laugh and talk and carry on amidst a crowd of people).

i know this because i am really good at constructing narratives.

during the years of 1987-89, my family lived in southern california, in a little place called pasadena, where my dad was furthering his education. pasadena, of course, is well known for the rose bowl and parade, but it is also home to pasadena christian school. this is where i began my scholastic journey towards a well-rounded education.

before my parents could enroll me in the school, i had to complete a sort of entrance exam. i remember one part of this exam vividly. it had a box and a circle, probably six inches apart, and i was supposed to take a pencil and connect the box with the circle using a line. and because i was able to successfully accomplish this task, i was accepted at pasadena christian school.

my memories of kindergarten are fond ones. i lucked out and got assigned to the afternoon section of the class. this basically meant i could sleep in, watch sesame street, mr. rogers’ neighborhood and today’s special while eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. then my mom would take me to school. sometimes we’d walk there, but often we drove.

all of us kindergarteners were issued little mats of carpet that we were to sit on, and it didn’t take long to memorize where it was we were to sit. that was part of our education i suppose. i don’t remember anyone who sat around me except for the girl to my left who got chicken pox part-way through the year and missed a couple weeks of class. when she came back i noticed she smelled funny and since she still had some dots on her face, i kept my distance. throughout my childhood, i carried three terrible fears with me: getting drafted into the military and having to go through boot camp and fight a war, having to get braces or having to wear head gear, and getting chicken pox because i didn’t want to deal with the itching and the funny smells.

in kindergarten, at least at pasadena christian, they found all kinds of reasons for patting people on the back and making us feel good about ourselves. a favorite way to do this was to have a poster on the wall dedicated to something like losing teeth or learning how to tie one’s shoes. i never did lose a tooth until the summer after kindergarten, and i was the only one without a big tooth on the poster with my name on it. everyone else felt good about their mouths though i guess, so by and large, that poster was a success.

as far as the shoe-tying poster went, everyone got a chuck-taylor-all-star-esque shoe with their name on it. that is, everyone except me. i’ll have you know i learned to tie my shoes though, before most of my classmates, even. the only problem was that i tied mine differently than everyone else. instead of the “normal” way of tying one’s shoes, i formed two loops and tied them together. i then double-tied them for good measure. my shoes stayed tied just as well as everyone else’s, that’s for sure. but someone, somewhere, rest their soul, decided that we should all tie our shoes the same way, even though that way is not instrinsically any better than any other method.

during recess, we would run around outside like chickens with our heads cut off in the playground and we would climb all over the enormous metal rocket with the slide down the side. it really felt like we were exploring space. but because it was so spacey, i spent more of my time on the ground. at some point and for some reason i don’t recollect, i became a dog on a leash and some other guy became my owner and he would lead me around on an invisible leash. this would continue until our teacher would say to stop it. i’m sure at some point i had to have questioned why i was always the dog and why the other guy was always the person, but i don’t think the roles were ever reversed.

but then came the bookmark contest. we all set out to design and color the best bookmark ever, the kind that would make our parents proud. i drew a tree, with a trunk and branches and green bushy leaves, but also with a cross-section of the roots and their intricate weavings underground. i tied for first place with someone i remember being my friend, who drew a beach with seagulls over it. it was a very grey day at the beach, in his drawing, but the judges must have been feeling melancholy and so they liked it. i don’t know what anyone else did for their bookmark, except that the kid working next to me drew king kong climbing a building, reaching into windows and scaring residents.

so, in kindergarten, i learned how to draw a line from a box to a circle. i learned that people with chicken pox smell funny. i learned that people who lose their baby teeth in a timely fashion are better than those who hold onto them. i learned that there is a right and a wrong way to tie one’s shoes, just like there is a right and a wrong side of the road to drive on or like there is a right and a wrong way to talk to your parents or your teacher. i learned that some people are dog owners, other people are dogs, and still others are astronauts and space explorers. and i learned that scientifically accurate diagrams of trees and cloudy days at the beach will beat king kong any day.

oh, and i also learned that 2 + 2 = 4 and that dick and jane enjoyed seeing spot run.