Every time I get to writing a story, the dialogue fees wooden and the rest feels like cumbersome description. Does this ever change? Do I just need to “find my voice”? Do I just suck at fiction?

Anyone up for some Barpy?

Writing is hard.

It is difficult to discipline your self to sit down and hammer out an abstract idea into paragraphs, stanzas, prose, and the like. It’s difficult because I feel the unseen eyes of judgment from church members, friends, and the unknown public that may read some things and say, “How can you say that? Don’t you know that this is how it really is?” or (an even bigger fear for me) “And you call yourself a Christian! How dare you say these things, tell these stories…” In other words, how dare I be this honest.

See, most of the stories I want to write, most of the poetry that bubbles just below the surface,  isn’t really for the “church”… more accurately, it’s not the stuff that the sub cult/culture of American Christianity wants to exist. Stuff about depravity and grace, stuff about bloody salvation and unfathomable love, stuff about the common grace that every sinner finds, Stuff about lament, tragedy, sorrow, and melancholy happiness, stuff about the celebration of an earthy life, filled with love, enjoyment, and pleasure. I feel this weird pressure to make sure that it has someone getting saved, or is some love song to Jesus in order for it to be Christian… all because I believe in Jesus as the Christ and await the resurrection from the dead.

I’m not even sure where this pressure comes from. Maybe it’s a paranoia I’ve created to have yet another excuse to not write.

See, even more than fears of public scrutiny, what keeps me from writing are my self indulgent excuses.

Writing is hard because art is hard. It takes work, blood, sweat, tears, trial and failure to actually see art created, or (more accurately) birthed. I am so good at finding excuses to not fail, and therefor not try. I don’t want to work for things, I just want people to call me brilliant. I want to have a beautifully written book(s), a well crafted blog, and people clamoring for my views on life, faith, and art… all without the years it takes to earn respect as an artist.

Damn my apathy.

I keep cycling back to this (is flaw the right word?) in my life. I have many ideas for books, for poems, for posts… yet when it comes to the point of getting them onto paper (or onto the screen) I chicken out. I use excess (I don’t know where to start, I have to go to work in an hour, I’m waiting for inspiration… all of them bullshit and I know it) to keep me a dreamer with nothing in my hands. In other words, the worst kind of failure: a failure by default because I never start.

There is a reason writing (and all art) is a discipline: it is not something confided on you because of your heritage, your birth, or your intellect. It is something that burns during conception inside your head and chest and then must be worked out of  eyes,  hands, and mouth. Otherwise there is nothing but a still born mess, covered with the blood of death. But I want my words to pulse with the blood of life, the stuff that keeps me wanting to turn the next page and radiates that feeling of contemplation and “there is more to life than this”.

Writing is hard, and as I sit, I know I don’t want to work. Maybe it is for this reason more than any other that I need the discipline of art. I need shape to my identity. Without something to work for, I have no meaning, no reason, no purpose. I don’t want a reasonless life.

A field where residents
Park their shopping carts,
full of cans and lives,
Now being fenced off so apartments can be constructed
And rented to people
Who can afford to move in.

I can’t help but wonder what Adam and Eve thought at the birth of Cain. Eve proclaims, “I have gotten a man with the Help of the Lord.” Was she thinking that this is her offspring of promise, the man who would crush the serpents head? Was Adam gazing at this child thinking that their time of exile in the east was drawing to a close, that with this child whom God had spoke of they would be in the garden again soon?

It is speculation through and through, but I can see this being their hope. We humans have a near sided way of thinking about hope. It needs to happen soon, otherwise we think it will never happen. So, we latch on to anything that might look something similar to the hope that has been promised. We decide that this must be what Yahweh was talking about, this is it. And we treasure these things, treat them as holy, view them as our savior. They are our favored idols. And, they let us down.

No matter what hopes and dreams Adam and Eve put into their first born, it was Able who by faith offered acceptable gifts to God. Cain may have thought that his favored position with his parents would mean that Yahweh would favor him as well. I don’t know. What we do know is that Cain was angry and his face fallen when Able’s gift was accepted with favor and His was not.

God saw this to, and spoke to Cain, not accusing, but with the idea of forming this man he gave to Adam and Eve into His image.

“Cain, in your heart you know what is the right things to do, you know what it is to have faith and to act with it. Don’t let this sin that is crouching at your heart master you.”

These are mornings for the sake of formation. Even in this eastern land, away from shalom and the garden God planted, Yahweh is seeking to form humanity the way he formed them first: into His image.

But, Cain kills Able. No, that’s not right; let’s tell it like it is. Cain murders Able. When he is confronted by Yahweh (just like Adam was in the garden), he does not pass the blame. He lies and denies knowing anything about it.

So, sin is compounded, getting deeper and deeper in to our habits, crouching in every way at every door of our heart, driving us by our actions and un-faith further and further away from the God who is everywhere.

Sin brings curse, and Cain is cursed: cursed from the ground, no longer will it produce for him; cursed to wander, not just driven out of his home, but to be homeless. Cain laments,

 This is more than I can handle! My guilt is too great. I am left to the mercy of anyone who finds me, and they will kill me  because I am cut off from you!

This is the focal point, the place in the story that brings it all into focus. Again we are lead to see that this is not a story about man. Rather, this is the revelation of God’s self to us in the midst of our brokenness. 

Not so! If anyone kills you, vengeance will be sevenfold dealt out to him by me, my own hand. See, here is a mark I my self am placing on you so that all men will know not to attack you.

Here is God declaring that He alone is the avenger of men, He alone is the one to curse, He alone is the one to stand in judgement over humanity. He is jealous of His right to be judge, and when ever anyone in all of creation seeks to take that position for them selves, the will have to deal with the wrath of Yahweh.

Compare these statements to Lamech’s self declaration of protection because he decided to strike down some young buck that harmed him. Can you see the safety in this revelation? Our safety doesn’t depend on us. No man can take Cain (you, me) out of God’s sight. No one can harm us, no matter what wrongs we have done, without God getting involved. Yes, there are curses, consequences, and deep wounds that we must face because of our sin, but in it all God still sees fit to keep our lives sacred so that He might seek to reform us into His image as long as we draw breath.

And so, The generations go on. Seth is born, and the place of Able in the first family is filled. His children carry with them the promise of Messiah, and people start invoking, worshiping, and calling out to Yahweh to save them. People live, love, and die, all the while worshiping God, walking with Him, and coming to know and be formed by Yahweh in these lands east of Eden.

I have a verb page now.

It becomes ever increasingly easy to gloss over sin, this condition of separation from God, broken peace in the world, and our alienation from each other. It’s easy to say, “I’ve messed up” and make it past tense, or to say that, “We all sin” and generalize it until it’s comfortable.

But we can’t do that with the first sin.

That’s why chapter three has been so hard for me to read. It’s not just, “Man and woman tuned from Yahweh, and were barred from the tree of life.” No, we are walked through the exact happenings of original sin, told the names of the people involved, showen their willingness, their buy into the lie, their guilt, and ther result of their actions of unbelief. All this reminds me that in my life, there is this sin condition, and that I cannot gloss over it. Rather, I have to walk through it, accept that it is mine, admit that I act with disbelief and un-trust in Yahweh, and that this guilt is rightly felt and is because of the steps I have taken to bring my self here.

Yet, Genesis 3 is not about the sin of man: it is about the nature of God.

Yahweh Himself showes up in the face of their sin. He does not keep them at a distance, but comes to them. Yes, His comming near means that His holieness demands that thier sin be delt with (and thus the curse is proclamed), but it also means that the promice of grace and restoration is at hand. In the midst of the pronouncement of the results of this broken shalom, God also announces the promice of the Saviour. Even the action of sending humanity away from the garden is an action in step with restoration, after all would you want to life forever in this state of sin, growing old, breaking down, and never shedding this mortal coil, never knowing the hope of resurrection and of being a part of everything being restored to the way it was intended to be? So, a cherubim and a flaming sword are posted to guard the way to the Tree of Life that stands in the midst of the garden, to ensure that restoration can happen for every human… even for me.

This chaper also introduces us to a theme: the promised land. This garden was planted by God for man to have, and now we are driven to the east. But we will see Yahweh promice us a home of His choosing again, and we shall see Him make good on that promise.