tidbits

From August 21st 2013 - July 29th 2014 this is 50 weeks worth of random brain activity I have written fueled by my experience abroad in the UK and beyond and my brief time in the YAGM community:

August 21st, So he stood in the corner all week. In hope to go unnoticed, unseen, unheard. Watching as they thinned out, he grew thinner with every exit.  Gone like yesterday's news, forever on his mind.

August 22nd, So here we are about to embark on an adventure to change us in mind, body, and soul.

August 28th, Where are you God?  Stop looking I am here.

September 5th, Stopped at a line of pavement, I kick start off into a pebble bed that snapped crackled and popped like when rice crispies are touched by ice cold milk.

September 6th, like it was some exotic medicine to kill my every ill

September 11th, It's the people you will meet that will be the best stories not the places you went.

September 29th, I don't miss things ever. I just long to be places I ain't. Once I'm there I don't care 'bout them no mo'. Chalk it up to a life of instant gratification.  So now I long for the desert.  The hot stinging dry.  Dead dirt that crackles when you step on it, not sink into it. when you look out in the distance and the sun looks like it's boiling the earth, not lost in fog.

October 2nd, Mondays felt like Wednesdays, Wednesdays felt like Fridays, and the weekends didn't feel like days at all, they were an amalgamation of time void of hours rounded off into moments that were over before you knew it.

October 21st, Lonely people shouldn't be left to contemplation, it never ends well.

November 19th, As they prayed for him I stood and watched

December 7th, A Christmas tree is a lot like a penis, no one wants a small one.

December 19th, It hurts so I drive. I drive to distract, to leave behind.  Monotonous enough to feel productive.  I drive to pass by to fool myself into my self prescribed daily recommended dosage of decay. It's hard reading the words. You can see them in their blinding pain, endless pictures worth all the novels in the world. You can hover over them and torture yourself with them. to be so practiced in the art of self preservation you conveniently left the madly in love for greener pastures.

December 31st, If Paris is the city of the world than London is the city of the universe.

March 8th, New York, its like Sodom and Gomorrah with a subway.

April 26th, Lutherans don't worship with the bible in front of them

May 1st, Only in grief, void of anger and resentment can one know truth.

May 11th, Your challenges this year won't be at your placement, they will be with your identity.

May 12th, Nothing on this list will be what you need, this is not a list that by ticking the boxes will make this year any easier, these are the obvious and no so obvious things you might want.  Pack your patience, not the patience for the language barriers or the cultural barriers, you packed those the day you said yes.  Pack the patience for yourself, for when times are hard and you want nothing more than to be home.  Pack the patience to know that you will be alone, despite this ability to connect with anyone at anytime, you will be alone and away from the people that know your subtle needs that your new friends will never be able to pick up on.  Pack knowing that no matter what you pack in your two suitcases, you didn't bring and can't bring everything you want.  Not the clothes, not the pictures, or that special present that is too strangely shaped to pack neatly will aid you.  But the smells, the air, the sounds which are more your real comforts than your having your favorite shirt or pair of shoes.  You can't bring your familiarity of life, that doesn't fit in your bag.   Your clothes will stop smelling of home they will wrinkle and fold differently, your cologne and perfume will never be what it was before the flight.  You'll realize that the pictures hurt just as much as they help you, those hand written notes and letters, with those warm memories will give you strength but not enough most days and leave you colder than any cold day.  But pack knowing that the, "it's just a year" mentality is in fact so much more than a year.  It's your life.  Your dreams, however much a part this is of those dreams will be raw and at times will feel the farthest thing away from your dreams.  You will be lost more hours than you have days in your year of service.  The essence of this year will not hit you until you are home again and realize you could have, and should have done somethings differently.  But at the end of it all know that you packed exactly what you needed to pack.  The struggles you will have will be the ones that give you answers that you hoped this year would be able to answer.  And know that you will be more complete from having an imperfect and incomplete packing list despite having ticked all the boxes on the list.
Also buy a rail card. You def need one of those.

May 17th, well emotion is a kind of power isn't it?  I'd say it's a burden at times to be emotional but someone has to be the one who feels deeply.  I like knowing that I can feel others that way and not need words to know those feelings.

May 18th, There is such a goodness in crying.  You never feel better than after a good cry.  The world for however small a second seems lifted from your shoulders and you feel what real peace feels like for just a moment.

May 19th, I think we see each other as forever blank slates.

May 20th, We are forever attached to people, more so than we wish we were at times, and more so than those seemingly extrovert peoples, but we love that we are forever committed to those we care about because they fuel us.

May 29th, Morgan Freeman titty sprinkles Batman!

June 25th, It's amazing how something as simple as an oak tree can remind you of home.

July 2nd, life is like construction there is no such thing as a perfect job.

July 22nd You can't pack the things you wish you could, the people that touch our lives.  But the great thing about us as humans is we save a little piece of each person we meet wether we know it or not.

July 29th, So he stands arms crossed in the corner, a small smirk in the corner of his lips, watching the ones he loves, tending the flock, feeling never more complete than now.

Lost in Winter

He slurs his words as he spoke, it was starting to snow.  The sky was backdropped in a sea of black for miles on end with only the sporadic street lit pavement as vantage points.  They stuck out like stationary fireflies along the road.  He didn't need them despite the lack of sobriety, he knew this road all too well.  His long shuffle alone in the cold familiar dark was accompanied only by the hot breath that escaped his chest; which was lost to the ice riddled air in between his incoherent conversations to nobody.  Even the occasionally wiz of passerby cars cutting through the black as they whipped their way home went altogether unnoticed in his vapid dialog with the dark.   He talked endlessly, staggering his words through a tongue that couldn't keep up with his jack rabbit of a mind.  It was then that he lurched over, hands drawn to his knees, a hard dry heave that sprung from the pit of his chest was the lone culprit to his abrupt stop.  He turned slightly as if to address and continue on speaking with his absent companion but instead of a monolog of a boozy bourbon humdrum speech, a short shriek dribbled from his mouth as a hot cloud oozed up from his mouth.  Then in an instantaneous switch like from white to black or from night to day his mindless ramble to his nobody accomplice that had stopped mid mumble now became a full frontal assault as he swung a hardened fist in the direction of his would-be partner.  Now violently swinging his arms he looked for the knockout punch.  Seemingly there was no reason for this solitary act of aggression but he whiffed clumsily with his left hook misses his target completely.  He swung again, a devastating body shot that nobody but the black air around him could feel, he staggered forward now, his equilibrium lost. The street lamp played tricks on him as white snow confetti danced down through the light.  He stumbled, trying to make contact, swinging again only more widely and out of pace. The firm pavement soaked with fresh powder, starts to slush between his shoes that were sliding and stumbling along what felt like soggy sandpaper.  It is then he trips and falls face first into slush hardly breaking his fall, he rolls onto his back and looks up blindingly into the halogen lamp some twenty feet up into the air.  He rocks himself up, and now trying to catch his absent attacker off guard, he throws his fist again blindly as his vision tries to catch up.  Again he staggers.  He fumbles.  He falls.  Crashing forward into the wooden railing that separates the pavement from the ledge, he breaks through the deadwood beam as he soars over the edge into the darkness, gravity pulling him down.  He crashes into the water cracking through the thin layer of ice, sobering him instantly.  The air escapes him, leaving his body empty as he continues to sink.

We still got time- 
well we still had time, once upon a dream...

You were my jukebox hero, my saving grace, the so right to my so many wrongs.  Why'd you have to go and leave, to follow in Winter's footsteps?

 - But I've been grounded hard from my long flight into oblivion.

The water dances around his hair

I thought once of better times, of happier times in your arms...
how silly a thought. 

He kicks up trying to surface, but he continues to sink

Yesterday I came to see you resting by the river, you were hypnotized in your trance. Frozen to time.
I wonder what I thought would change after all this time. 

His once protective coat that shielded him from the cold now sucks him down with each vainful attempt to push up

she fell through the ice, how were we to know?  You always blamed yourself for it.

I can't take your empty eyes anymore... 
Now drift softly into my melancholy as I push you further into your infant glassy-eyed state of trauma.  

The bubbles are rocketing out from his mouth as they break free from the stratosphere

Our baby's gone lost to the winter for which we named her. 

Instinctively he flapped his arms heavily, trying to propel himself out

but I was gone too, 
I was lost to you forever the moment we lost her.  But the truth was I never stopped loving you
you were the one that stopped.

We buried our love in Winter's grave.  Nothing really matters - and you just sit and cry anyway. 

My cancerous words dropped like bombs, the pitter patter of word diarrhea beat against your brow and their pain washed away any feeling that was left inside you. 

The tide is starting to rise as I drowned in a sea of our memories. 

  They say their are beacons for lost ships.  I am so far lost now the only light is at the bottom.  
It's getting hard to breath now.     

He sucks in water. Needles digging into his wet water-logged skin. 


Now these are just the uncensored thoughts 
of an old man
lost in the bottle
of his own inactive destructivity 
prolonged by the mortified gratitude 
of the numbing miracle elixir that covers up the things I never had the heart to say. 

I watched you fade away into your own darkness
never to resurface, never to try again 

I can't blame you for choice 
she was our first, our only
but you were my first and my only 
doesn't that mean anything?

I hoped to see you one day 
after all this
maybe I will

He thrusts up trying to continue on, only to fall again, drifting further down.
He gasps for air in the vacuum of black water

It's cold.
I am not shivering.
I'm beginning to like the dark.

I Envy These Addicts

There we stood in the blaze of the late afternoon sun.  Kings of our own, amongst the fields of ripening apples and raspberries, lords over of all we could see.   Funny how something as astronomically simple as being alone can provide illusions of grandure.  The two of us stood out of place against our backdrop of leaves and trunks, in our levi’s  and boots. Sweat dripping down our brows, we hacked away at the overgrowth of weed that infected the rosy red fruits.  Righteous saviors we were.  Expelling the wicked with our swift justice of clippers and claws.  We were the Boondocks Saints of the world that was the Allotment.  Thinking to myself who best fits Connor and who best fits Murphy I notice my thin pot-bellied companion take out his handkerchief and dab at his face.  He breaths in hot sun, alleviating his back for just a moment.  I attempt a search and rescue crawling through the miniature forest of bramble cutting up my arms -my partner shakes his head at me laughing, wondering if I am for real -I soon arise with both hands brimming with a mound of fresh red pods.  A smile stretches long and big across his face.  The two of us plop down next to one another.  I toss up a berry high into the air and catch it as it falls into my mouth.  Sweetness beyond description explodes as my teeth crush into it, releasing the juice.  My amigo tries the same.  It hits his chin and bounces off into the tall grass we sat in.  Much to learn still, this padawan does.  We look at each other and laugh.  I wonder if Tom Joad ever got to have a feeling as tranquil as this.  I sit and wonder about the Joads.  

We ate our fill of the berries and continued to sit soaking in the sun as we did.  Behind us the sky was pale and the sun flared hot as she sprayed us down with heat.  We sucked in the breezes that came with her.  still so much to do, but that can wait another moment longer.  Our rusty boom-box belted out static as Like a rolling Stone sauntered out when it could beneath our voices. I listen to his yarns as he lives them back to life.  Constructing elaborate narratives filled with run-ons as his cockney language inspires more of the Joads as they dance across my mind. He tells me about his life, his sins, and his virtues.  His escapades are great and numerous; of How he slew a fire breathing ex, rescued a damsel in distress, betrayed a brother-in-arms, had songs written about him, how he found a lost and forgotten treasure, meeting a monk among the thorns of roses and how he failed to protect a lord in a time of great peril.  His stories split off each other like branches of a great tree, to inform me of the endless back stories of this, and of that, so that I can grasp at to what it is he is saying.  As he monologues I see his desires to be back in the self-proclaimed enchanted life he knows of slaying dragon exes and rescuing princess. He longs not of this kingdom we share that stands open before him.  He all but confirms his premature departure.  

I retract inwards lost to my mind. His words are muted now as I enter my infinite state of singularity.  To be so sure of something.  So strongly in defense, so intensely loved is this boy’s life, so much so that no one can rip him from it.  I envy this addict. I struggle with these boys so that I may have what they have.  To be so near that I may feel the radiation from their throughly explored life within the holy spirit. I long to do and see great things like this boy besides me. I can’t help but want these things.  I let my conscious take me deep into the depths of my dark brooding rabbit hole of a soul. I envy to have the holy spirit like they do.  To sing out my love for god like they do. to share like they do.  I envy to not fight the powers that surround me anymore.  help me make that leap O god! help me cast away my weights of doubt to fully embrace your presence as divine and everlasting. 

I manage to catch a few last words from the pot-bellied-boy.  He confesses to me he has never left the UK. I know in the depths of me that this will be the boy’s fate.  He continues to talk but I’m vacant to his speech.  It is the life he wants to return to one day soon.  There is no stopping him now.   A tear rolls down my face and hits the corner of my trembling lips.  The bell rings.  It’s time.  He gets up to leave, I stay.  He asks if I am coming and all I can manage is “you go on ahead now boy, I got some unfinished business here.”  I don’t watch as he leaves, I just listen as his footsteps grow faint and disappear for good.  This would be the last time I would ever see the pot-bellied-boy.   

I pick up my clippers and in a heavy breath of grass and sweet fruit continue the mindless work of cutting.  I cut, and I cut, and I cut, to numb myself of this newly awarded wisdom.  Before long there isn’t much left of the field of red buds.  Dusk starts to settle over the orchard in which I worked, turning the red into faded pink crimson.  I stop and close my eyes and think of home, of my California castle by the sea.  He is alone now.  Lost in his own mirky cloud that tarnishes his heart.  Forever alone now in this ever darkening world of limitless isolations.  It is then that the holy spirit like a cool breeze washes over me like holy water itself speaks to me:

For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. Jerimiah 29-11

I give myself to you lord.  I will never stray again.  Make me whole in ways I cannot fill.  Let me be a sponge to you lord.  Let your magnificence reign through me.

The Half-Cooked-Life-Accounts of J. Walter McGuinty: Man on the Run

The story I am about to share with you is one of fantasy inspired by truths from the actual events of J. Walter McGuinty’s life, who is in fact a fake person I made up for the telling of this tale.  All events described herein actually happened, though on most, if not all occasions, I have taken certain, very small yet sometimes astronomically large, liberties with chronology, names, places, and actual events completely falsifying them, because that is my right as an American.  But mainly it is to protect and honor the man behind this inspired journey.  This is in no way related to my previous posts but is in fact something different and meant to stand alone as an experience experienced. 

“So tell me J...” the young blonde says smoothly, far more comfortably than she should while lighting her fourth joint in as many hours.  She takes a long hit.  Loosening her ponytail she gives it a gentle shake allowing it to lay free.  Letting the gas settle and spread throughout the entirety of her body comforting her she exhales her lung full of marijuana. 

There she sat with a man she had only just met hours before in a gutted eight passenger stolen ‘71 dodge van sitting atop a faded mattress from her home on her way to Daytona, FL to make an easy 500 dollars.  The van was lined with cut out magazine pictures of the Star ship Enterprise to blotch out the rising eastern sun as best as they could.  More pictures lined the framework like Led Zeppelin’s new album, Houses of the Holy.  Two movie posters: Harold and Maude and Daughters of Darkness lye across the top of the van roof.  

She made it subtly known with her body language her physical attraction to the older man who sat vapidly across from her in the small enclosed space lost in something.  “How come I don’t know more about you?” she says playfully in hopes of not looking overly flirtatious.  Her body stretched out. She was tall for her age.   She was taking full advantage of the naturally bumpy ride they had been on.  With every prior passing bounce she had been letting herself bounce just ever so slightly toward him.  She was completely smitten.  He on the other hand was not, lost in his own glass-eyed state of trauma frantically waiting for her to hand him his pain killer.  His shakes are getting worse.

Her face was rounder than most, a fact she attempted to hide by letting down her hair in an on going struggle to look older than she was.  Jeanine’s eyes increasingly plain were mottled brown and at any given opportunity, no matter what time of day, would wear her favorite ray-bans to cover them up.  She was strikingly ordinary in her faded blue bellbottoms, daisy patterned halter top, and would have been all but forgettable if it hadn’t been for the smile that she flashed out at the end of her sentences.  Had it been another part of her anatomy J. Walter would have been caught staring.  The way her short upper lip would slide up effortlessly exposing her brilliant teeth was hauntingly unforgettably intoxicating. Now seemingly transfixed on her like a moth to a flame he leaned in from atop the suitcase he sat to join the conversation that was now worth being a part of.  The long black hair that rested behind his shoulders now dangled near his face.  Jeanine leans in, slowly brushed her hair to one side, hoping this is the moment she has been carefully drawing up these past few hours.  She was completely unaware of the joint burning dangerously close to her fingers.  

When a quick ill timed southern accent, “Oh come on Jeanine, lay off, he’s higher than a kite right now!” comes from the driver seat.  The driver pushes in a led zeppelin cassette instantly playing the Rain Song already 43seconds in, "You are the sunlight in my growing," meanders out softly from Robert accompanied by lullaby-like enchanting strums from Jimmy.  furiously Jeanine turns around, “Can it Marty” she hollers over the ballad, in clear opposition.  “Had it not been for Marty ruining the moment” she thought to herself selfishly “we would have been kissing”

Returning her focus back to J. Walter she flashes her smile. She adorns her most adult, ladylike disposition and silently offers him the joint she had been selfishly hogging.  With a four-fingered hand he takes the joint and takes a hit from it leaning back brushing the long black hair out of his face as he does.  “Finally,” he thinks to himself.  His body begins to already feel the neglected effect it had been feeling and starts to return to a state in which he can operate.  He exhales reluctantly after a few moments and begins.  

“I don’t really know where you would like me to being”,  he says in a slight gruff amalgamation of accents nevertheless in his most capriciously posh voice.

“I suppose it would make sense for me to start at the beginning so you can follow along.  To say I’ve had a tumultuous or restless life wouldn’t be doing my life any justice. Despite my attempts to hide it, its true to some degree. I have had a life full enough for two lives in comparison to some of you lot.  I’ve seen more of this ruddy country than you have seen of this state in which you live.”  

“Na fuck that”, she says getting up then quickly resting on her knees and shins besides J. Walter.  Her eyes were full of possibility.  She grabs his calloused four-fingered hand running the soft pads of her fingertips gently over the spot that lay vacant and says, 

“tell me how this happened?” beaming at him with her enveloping smile. 

J. Walter takes another hit and hands it back to Jeanine 

“Oh this?” holding his hand out flexing it as if nothing was out of the ordinary.  He was as cool as a cucumber.  Turning on his charm he knew he had her undivided attention, so he pressed on blowing out the smoke, “well you see I had gone to see my bird Rebecca who had gone to California to see family.  She told me she would be out there for a month or so and that I should come out to see her.”   

“Rebecca?” she said bitterly “who is that? You never told”

-- J. Walter cut her off harshly, “Now do you want to here about the story or not, goddammnit?”  She went silent.  “So I stole me a ‘67 Chavelle -- damn was that a nice car,” he interrupted himself, just remembering the smooth white leather and the sheen of the turquoise metallic paint put him into a great high.  he continued on “and I drove out to see her.  Things were good.  Real good.  Ain’t nothin’ bad happens in that state.  You know what they call California?”  he said to her. 

“Unh uh” she replied riveted as she ever was.

“The Golden State.  And let me tell you it was.  Those beaches, the sun...” he drifted now “Even the air was full of gold...” setting himself further into his own brand of comatose joy.  Then it was as if a switch flipped on in his head.  The smile on his face that had been so charming and infectious lifted from him. He tried to continue; “Things were good till I started drinking a bit too much.” his eyes went blank. “One day when we went down to one of the old piers...”  He no longer was with the girl who so absently clung to his voice as he filled her with sultry words.  Vacantly J. Walter sat again for a long time.  

“J.” she said as she shook his leg, “What happened?”

Startled, he quickly covered his tracks.  Clearing his throat, “I was just trying to figure out the best way to say it.”  His hand shook looking for the joint Jeanine held and grabbed it from her and drew it to his mouth.  Longer this drag was, longer than other other drag he had taken.  He was running from something he couldn’t forget.  He finished the joint off then took a worn flask that lay on the floor and washed it down with a few strong gulps of whisky.  “Sheesh, Jeanine, you sure are impatient.” Marty’s drawl quickly kicked out with a smug laugh. He went back to drumming on the steering wheel, following along with the acoustic guitars that were building into a crescendo towards the abrupt infusion of electric guitars, drums, and bass that would be the culmination of 87 seconds of fierce Over the Hill and Far Away.  Jeanine rolled her eyes at his remark.  

J. Walter blew out the smoke and continued without a hitch, “I decided it was high time to give my cousin in Texas a visit.”

                                         to be continued...

Knowing Is My Addiction

Sitting in a small fold up chair I’m watching some of the boys play pool, the song Lean On Me comes billowing out of the stereo setting the mood.  It was atop an old cabinet in the corner behind the pool table, the center piece of the room.  The cabinet shares a wall with two glass double doors wide open where four more boys are out on the patio smoking and sharing stories when Mark starts to sing, no doubt excited as it is three verses too early.  As the rest of the boys in the room follow suit I can’t help but look on curiously, I can see why they like this area of the manor.  Beyond its restricted comforts are a sea of freedoms that blanket them as if it were a club house.  It’s the He-Man-Woman-Haters-Club, or what I would imagine the little rascals looking like if they had grown up.  As my mind lingers on the idea of who in the house would be Spanky and Alfalfa I am brought back to the doctors office I sat in months ago.  The little rascals was playing as I waited for my doctor to see me, for the very physical exam needed for me to be in the place I was. Funny how things can stay collected in your brain waiting for the right moment to saunter out for you to find and pick up as if they were newly discovered.  It then dawns on me that the very book I was attempting to read was a gift from that doctor, a book on a doctor’s perspective with addiction.  I can only give a chuckle.  This was not mere coincidence or random act assigned to me but instead it was through my faith that all of these strings tied together so nice and cleanly.

I shake myself from this inward enlightenment to hear that the song has changed, Take My Breath Away is now filling the boys with joy as their game of pool has come to a halt so that they can remember like they did when they were young.  Perhaps of the girl that hadn’t yet left, or the daughter they hadn’t yet hurt.  For some of these chaps are in fact fathers and some yet even more are grandfathers still.  But never the less boys they are.  The lost boys.  My lost boys.  They gather around the pool table in the room coated with intricate wood beams and high ceilings, enough couches and sofas to seat twenty.  From all walks of life these boys come and go, hardly any staying though in this home that gives so freely.  This place is their limbo state, a scale waiting to be tipped in a direction to aide them in making their decisions, no more than a bump in the road just before an intersection.  It is then that Neil turns his pool stick into a guitar completely enveloped in his memories.  And the boys laugh and continue to sing.  I am now invisible to them, nothing more than a space occupier like the broken lounge chair opposite them.  

For a long time leading up to this moment I wrestled with the questions, what am I going to do here? How am I going to help?  and perhaps the biggest one of all why me?  My analytical nature would not let me stop thinking about these questions.  Like a fish to water or perhaps even an addict to addiction, I poked and prodded.  Scratching away.  Deep jagged blows ravaged my brain as I fought to find the answers I am so accustomed to finding.  For in a life of endless answers hardly ever are we satisfied with just a question as being enough.  Knowing is my addiction.  It is the tonic I use to quell my sense of personal inadequacies.    like a drunk drinks to fall into their infant glassy eyed state to produce their opiate for emotional disdain.  I intern fall back inside my bottle of the mind and think my memories to life reliving them as I scrutinizingly inspect each one like a dream. This is my pain-killer, once already lived pain is far easier to consume than pain still yet to come.  The greatest fear of all is knowing that you can’t stop anymore.  That you must continue in order to remain. To put one’s life into harms way, to completely throw away our instinct to live in order to make the moment tolerable is insanity at its best. The emotional anesthetic that addiction holds over us is without question the most difficult mountain to climb.  But however impossible it might seem or foreign a thought it is.  Our souls search for cleansing even amongst the haze of the warp.  

I can’t help but feel that this is the place I need to be.  Right here in this chair.  Right here with these boys.  The lost boys.  But These lost boys are no more lost than I am.  It is then I am sent back into my memories to my week of training in Chicago.  In that terribly boring room, wasting away what might be my last few days in the sunshine and the warmth of its rays.  There I sat trying to learn about the work I was going to be doing the next year as a missionary for the ELCA.  But I remembered something from one of the many sessions of many hours spent in that ultimately forgettable plain room, “walking together in solidarity practices interdependence and mutuality.”  like the doctor’s office just mere minutes before, this memory is served up right on queue.  Like a perfectly timed catalyst all the questions I had been wrestling with were now gone.  It finally sank into the folds forever to stay in the cognizant.  

Divinity comes in the most uncommon ways to us.  In the most unsuspecting ways It is our responsibility to be open to accepting the connections when they come and seeing a glimpse into the architecture of the maze God has laid out in front of us.