mind in print

My name is Blake Mankin and I am a recovering modern cynic.

It’s been a long time coming, let me tell you.

Up until this semester of college I would say that I allowed myself to live the disheartening life of bitter modern cynicism for about a year. Modern cynicism is a nasty disease that slowly invades the soul and permeates the mind.

The dictionary defines modern cynicism as “bitterly or sneeringly distrustful, contemptuous, or pessimistic.” That pretty much sums up a huge chunk of my recent past.

Modern cynicism comes dressed as a wolf in sheep’s skin. It is so attractive yet so devastating. It is like taking a bite of forbidden fruit and then having it never digest. It allows us to believe we are right while we bitterly view those closest to us as being wrong. It allows us to think we hold truth while we bitterly hold distaste for authority.

I bargained with cynicism only to realize that I got the short end of the stick. Becoming a cynic requires giving up joy in exchange for bitterness. It requires trading love for distaste. It requires giving up the ability to be kind for the inability to be gracious.

Cynicism made me view people’s dreams as illegitimate.

Cynicism made me feel depressed.

Cynicism made me lose sight of hope.

Cynicism made me lose all trust.

Cynicism. And joy cannot exist in the same sentence.

Let G-d soften our hearts as we surrender our control and seek Joy!

Let me tell you, cynicism is the most deadly of diseases.

These photographs of albatross chicks were made in September 2009 on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

~Chris Jordan
October 2009

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

A piece of clear covered in mud
Window post-transparent
Miles fog such pure vision
Past decision taints the view

Firecracker lights but falls a dud
Ignition runs errant
States enhance sure fission
Time delays a July hue

Open wound without new blood
Mordant slang rampant
Love is a cut so strangely hidden
Future has an early curfew

What is pain, my dear sweet friend?
Is it the cause of another or the product of ourselves?
Eyes blurry in the most blatant trend
We’re putting nonsense on our bookshelves

Sweet little Moses floats softly down the river not knowing that the Father is making a daughter find his basket and nurture his infancy into adolescents. Sweet daughters, sweet infants, sweet baskets, we’re all such wonderful players in ancient stories. Blow the dust off of historic tales. Pharaoh is us and our dad and we’re the unexpected player and the piece that doesn’t seem to fit but completes the masterwork.

Sweet girl, daughter of the wretched king, holds the infant boy. We’re all three begging to be redeemed and isn’t it wonderful that Holy Plasma heals the bruised and Marvelous Platelets close the wounds so that we too can rescue and be rescued while remaining as a pile of misused context clues!

The rushing Nile is like our dear sweet Father who saved us from the father and the genocide in his eyes. Praises be to King of kings because the king wants us dead and the King saves our lives.

Baby Moses eats from the breast of a stranger but the stranger is his savior and he remains ignorant to reality but the woman knows the importance of confidentiality! “Childish” isn’t as bad as we’ve grown to make it.

Sounds so simple taste so sweet
Like honey dripping on her ears
Romancing souls He calms her fears
Silent song puts dance in her feet

Mystery so simple yet so complex
Like a kid’s book read by a philosopher
Wooing hearts he calls her daughter
Divine attraction trumping the opposite sex

Go to Refuge hurting girl so weary
Like a magnetized lover He draws close
Burning heat to her heart that froze
Love responds to her every counter theory

reality sets in, open eyes
see morning light
perception isn’t truth
truth is G-d’s and i’m a broken message
reading like a book with missing pages and missing hooks

a story, with no Author
is lonely living
write me a poem?
rhyme it with every theme i’ve missed
to read sweetly like sugar coming from Your lips

The Great Spirit whirls and wisps through the sandy gloom of this desert. It is a peaceful breeze, not a strong wind. It grazes my cheeks and it feels cool but not cold. Comforting and not annoying. Sitting quietly in the sand, I play with a stick and I carve pictures on the ground of how I dream of life to be away from the desert.

The romance I long for to fill that empty corner in the room of my soul, the physical things I desire, the security net I want for my belongings. Images. There they are, drawn in the sand. Here I am, holding the tool that created them.

I’m parched, I’m hungry, I’m lonely.

Then comes The Great Spirit!

In a split second I feel the cool breeze on my face turn to a gust like I have never felt. Sitting in the sand, I am blown over onto my face.

As quickly as it came, it is done.

The stick I had been drawing with has been blown away and I open my closed eyes.

My drawings in the sand have blown to nothing and appear as if they were never there.

Then The Great Spirit whispers in my ear: “You are not in the desert. What you have drawn in the sand is in the desert! Let what you want stay as it is: desert. Let me lead you home!”

My drawings are desert, but His drawings are Perfect.

My good friend Mackenzie Ervin contributed this piece in response to ‘On Doubt.’ I’m very grateful for her thoughts, and I know you will be too.

Blake wrote about doubt the other week, a doubt that I have become extremely familiar with in the past month. I have tasted cynicism and wrestled with faithlessness; I have ignored God’s gift of hope and love and comfort in times of loneliness and despair and bewilderment.

Throughout last semester, I struggled with weakness. Architecture studio overwhelmed me. I eventually got to the point where I had to lean on God just to wake up in the morning. But in my weakness, I found the strength of God. Despite how downtrodden I became in my stress, I still saw the joys of the Lord resonating all around me—that is, until the semester ended and I was able to stop and catch my breath. That was when I began to turn away from God.

No longer needing Him to carry me through the days of studio, I felt like I could manage just fine on my own. What a fool I was to think so! I’ve grown so far from my Savior that I am more miserable this winter break than I was all last semester. The more I look to the world to satisfy, the more empty and forsaken I feel. I have become a cynic, bewildered and unsure of anything.

Still, I remember days in the presence of God, filled with hope and companionship. I remember the fulfillment that I had always felt with God’s love in my heart.

I am torn between the pleasures of this world and the perfect peace of God. My soul knows only God fulfills, and my soul pants only for Him. Yet, my foolish, sinful desires argue contrarily. They try to convince me that the world will satisfy, if only I look harder for that satisfaction, if only I stray farther from God.

In juxtaposing the two different ways of living (with and without God), I can assuredly say that life with Christ is much more satisfying. While the things of this world never seem to complete me, I feel whole with God in my heart and His Word on my mind. I find reason for living beyond my selfish ambition.

Praise God that He is faithful even when we are not—He pursues us even when we run far from Him. Already God is using friends like Blake to bring me back into His presence and remind me of His fulfillment. Before composing these thoughts, I was almost sure I was done with God; only while dwelling on the differences between life with and without a Savior did I realize how wrong I have been.

All this to say, “Let us rejoice in our tribulations, for tribulation brings perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope.” ( Romans 5 )

And, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? […] But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.” ( Romans 8 )

-Mackenzie Ervin

Found this prompt: Write about “deceit” in exactly 100 words.

Deceit

A friend shares a lie with the intent of phrasing it as truth,  the voice that says we need things beyond food, water, shelter, and dignity, the notion that power means success: deceit.

Tricks that our modern serpents slither out of their mouths as we lust over the juicy apple of greed, feelings of self-seeking motives, the idea that security is the ultimate goal:  deceit.

What we love to do to others but feel betrayed when it is inflicted upon us: deceit.

The root of deceit is greed, root of greed is selfishness, and the root of selfishness is unrestricted pleasure.

Deceit.

Here is a short version of a long story:

This summer I was very far from the Spirit.  Very far.  I hated Him.

I perceived Him as a narcissistic entity that enjoyed sending people to hell and smirked as we suffered through the pain that He dished out to us.  My heart was as hard as a rock.  I was convinced of the existence of Him, but I hated what I saw to be His characteristics.  I thought that worshipping this Being that was responsible for inflicting so much pain on humanity was the dumbest thing I had ever heard.  Really?  God is good and God could have stopped that tsunami/genocide/cancer/earthquake that killed thousands and thousands of people?  I didn’t get it (and I still don’t).

I became cynical and bitter.  I was joyless and lonely.

Then He took my heart of stone and shattered it into a million pieces.

Recently I was reading  The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones.  It is a collection of short stories.  In one of these short stories, a character is describing the faith of another character.  He talks about how the other character describes his faith like this:

“My head doesn’t get it but my heart bleeds for Jesus.”

I think that is what I have realized over the past semester.  The Spirit hasn’t given me all of the answers to my questions and doubts, but He has shown me what it is like to have my heart softened and nurtured by Him.  When He is breathing peace into my lungs and I allow Him to hug my neck and hold me in His arms and sway with me as I want so badly to run away, I know that He is good.

I can tell you with full sincerity and truth that I have experienced first hand what life is like far from Christ and what life is like close to Him, and being close to Him is infinitely better.

I can’t tell you why shit happens under the watchful eye of a loving God.  I can’t.  But I am convinced of the goodness of God.  Sometimes I don’t even know why.  I just know that He is good.  I know that He loves us.  I know that He weeps when people die and when people are hurting.  I just know that He does.

Do I still doubt?  Of course I do.  I still get frustrated with the idea of hell and I want so badly to rationally understand everything that He is.

But my soul finds comfort and rest in His refuge and it finds emptiness and loneliness in my own logic.

What changed from this summer until now?  I stopped trying to get it with my head and started understanding with my heart.

As I close this post, I want to write a prayer from St. Francis of Assisi (from the original French version):

Translated, it is this: