I Shot a Man in Reno...

...not really, but I did read a fascinating book recently by a man whose surname is Reno. In fact, his name is Rusty Reno (savor the alliterative goodness). Mr. Reno's work is entitled "In the Ruins of the Church," a dense piece on the state of the church as he sees it and how one ought to respond to it. Sound original? I didn't think so either, that is, until I flipped through the first few pages of Mr. Reno's remarkable little book. What did I expect to find? The usual, angry (sometimes rightfully so) commentary on how messed up the church has become and why we need a scorched earth policy of diverse forms in order to salvage her image and purpose. With regards to these books, my mind had become a veritable burned-over district, a calloused surface that refused to absorb any more rants.

All that to say, I did not have the most receptive mind when going into Reno's text, and that it moved me is a credit to its affective power. Whilst sparing you of a mere synopsis, Reno manipulates two ideas in particular that I feel are just what we need right now (by "we," I mean anyone who has ever at any time felt the church let them down; otherwise, most of us). First, Reno discusses the "sin of distance." While it has an eerie ring, the truth behind this idea is something so common that we may not immediately recognize it for what it is. The sin of distance, according to Reno, is the inclination of church-goers to "be in but not of" their churches due to personal grievance, discord, etc. This perverse parody of how the Christian sub-culture normally views the world around them turns inward, and breeds an invisible segregation within her own ranks. I bet you have noticed it, I bet you have done it yourself a time or two or more. Example: you are sitting in your seat and church begins with the first songs of the worship set coming from the band or choir. You recall with the first notes that this is a 'new' style that you feel has no place in church. You do not want to be obvious about your discontent and so you sing along, but you know full well that you have no part, and largely want no part, in what is going on around you. And that is the sin of distance. It is that invisible self-alienation that pervades the heart and mind of the church-goer. This immediately requires a few qualifiers. First, this does not mean excommunication. I have seen churches (mostly youth groups) through uncharitable ostracism make it quite unbearable for a person to partake in the service. Second, this does not mean that feelings of discontent in themselves are wrong, indeed they can often be the whispers of discernment. Third, this does not mean that one should not distance oneself from sin (just not the sinner). Essentially, the sin of distance is self-imposed spiritual isolation based on dissatisfaction. This bears some more fleshing out, though.

There is a particular example I feel qualified to examine, mainly because it comes from my own testimony. Two periods in my life have been marked by severe angst and grief concerning the church I attended. These illustrate the difference between good and bad distance well, I think, because whereas the first period was an evil sort of cynicism, the second was due to a profound woundedness that I fervently tried to heal, and failed to do so. In my first dark period, I committed the sin of distance grievously. Not content to merely remain aloof from my fellow congregants, I am ashamed to say that I was subversive in the church as well. I was cynical, and bitterly sarcastic toward the well-meaning leaders and fellow students because of what I called the "blunt simplicity and elementary nature" of the teaching, worship, and discipleship. Here's the tricky part: deep down, I craved intimacy and deep discipleship, to go further up and further in, so to speak. I failed to do so by alienating myself from the entity I needed the most: community. In my second dark period, I craved intimacy in the church community, and sought to serve as well as I could, knowing how much I needed them and how good it was to be needed. Then, due to some very unfortunate events, I found myself ostracized from the community as I had seen done to others in the past. This is not meant to condemn them, but rather to point out that in those times, I made an anguished decision. I committed something akin to the sin of distance again, differentiated sheer grief. Grief is the product of a wounded love, and that is exactly what happened. Not to contradict myself from earlier, when I said that the sin of distance does not apply in cases like this, what I know to be true here is what Reno himself seems to know in his text. My distance was not self-alienation, but the beleaguered final move of a tired soul. I know what happened to me, but I would not presume to make a standard of it for others.

This then, is Reno's concept of the sin of distance. And yet, how does one avoid it or recover from it? The cure may be found in his sister-idea of the "love of our ruins," in which Reno draws on the imagery of Nehemiah (who does that?) to demonstrate how Scripture leads us in a path of 1) return, 2)reflection, 3)resolve, and 4)rebuilding when confronting the reality of our ecclesial ruins. I will save this, however, for my next post.

"Hail to the rest of the road!"

I became married on December 20, 2008, to she who has now become Melissa Grace Butler. While contemplating this action in the moments when I find myself able to reflect quietly in the stillness between waves of wonder and amazement, a tender realization affected me with quiet poignancy: I have died. I should say, perhaps more fittingly (and to the chagrin of my English teachers) that 'I has died.'

What do I mean by this? Well, it seems funny that out of all the marriage advice I received prior to my wedding, the piece that stuck out was realizing that something very fundamental within me was about to change. My marriage counselor helped me clarify my thoughts during one of our sessions on this matter. He asked me the terribly ambiguous question, "what is marriage?" Such questions are terrible for me, in that I realize immediately that even an irresponsible answer would take hours, and here he was wanting one in a matter of seconds. The nerve! I blurted out something to the effect that marriage was a union of a man and a woman wherein their fundamental beings were altered from two-ness to one-ness. With a smirk he agreed and said that's why it's a sacrament, that it involves God fundamentally altering what something or someone is.

I took this to heart, and wrote a section of my vows based on this idea of fundamental change. Amid this process, I encountered a truth that scared me deeply at first, but has since become something of a blessed notion: I must die. While I do not mean this literally, I do think the direct referential meaning of that phrase is closer to the truth of my situation than our common understanding. In other words, yes, I will continue to live as Hayden Butler. Yet something needs must change, does it not? We are talking about nothing short of the miraculous when we begin to think of two-ness becoming one-ness, right? If we paid attention in math classes, which regrettably I did but marginally, we would know that whole systems of beautiful mathematics are arranged on the truths that one is one and that two is two. So when God says two shall become one, we are dealing with a deep magic.

So I has to die. There is something about Hayden Butler and something about Melissa Grace that needs to die. No longer are we two but one. When it comes to Melissa, the referent "I" must now begin to lose some of its ingrained meaning, and part of our self-ness (not the same as selfishness)must die to allow room for something to grow that is more beautiful than either of us could achieve alone.

In my vows, I wrote that I shall share with my wife in, as Dante phrases it, "one sweet life divided" among two. Without her, I will perhaps live but a half-life. This must frighten me, and it does, but there is something tender and beautiful about it as well. I do not yet have more than an inkling about what this shall mean. I stand, as it were, with all my road before me; or, I should say, with all our road before us. So, as Van and Jean toasted yearly, so I shall now, "if it's half as good as half we've known, here's HAIL! to the rest of the road!"

But it's MYspace!

I know, and why shouldn't it be?

I have heard it said that the internet is the single-most democratizing invention in human history. My response is, "Really?" I mean, don't get me wrong here, there are so many wonderful qualities and features on myspace. Such stellar characteristics include the compråehensive nature of the interface. Where else can I know exactly how many friends I have? Where else can I gather them as a captive audience through carefully crafted bulletin posts? I can tell the world exactly what I think of it through blog posts, and inform everyone of my favorite movies, my interests, my (exhaustive) book list, and my heroes. Further, I can even tell everyone About Me! There is even a section just for that!

With myspace, I know where I stand with people because they can tell me what they think through comments, and I can show them exactly what I want them to see through the photos that I choose to share. All in all, I can be safe, and that is a good thing, because there is a lot on the line when you actually share these things in a one-on-one encounter. You risk rejection, laughter, or sometimes the most terrifying possibility: being accepted despite what you are. That's not for me. I am decidedly in favor of myspace, where I can have as many friends as I want through the push of a button. I mean, it's really all about community, and myspace helps us form that, right?

Response to "Hamlet"

Pull Question: Hamlet

Hayden Butler

Mr. Llizo

Pull Question: Hamlet

Intention: to compose another poem attempting Shakespearean tone and language used in Hamlet in response to the question as to how her death is a symbol of her relationship to Hamlet. It begins lofty and loving, as does Ophelia, but progresses into a lack of rhyme and meter to represent her fall into authentic madness.

Yet another letter:
Speak, my love, in lofty verse
And let thy winged words rehearse
Within thy mind and form a fetter
To tie thee to me and make we better.

O cruelest father, cruel brother too:
Command me not along this path,
And so in doing spark the wrath
Of spurned Love, whose aftermath
Is madness’ mindless, murderous coup.

O Day of my most nighted dreams:
My love doth in a killing tone,
Quite quietly, and yet not so quiet, me disown.
His letters fall as petals from a garland;
Naught remains but these to drown
My crowned, paupered, day-night dreams.

Look, look, look!
Here, there, now, then
Where, near, when, how?
Dost the queen approve my verse?
Let it serve then as a hearse
To bear the corse of love disdained,
And send her smiling to the brook!
Hey and a ho! And a hey nonny no!
If she is there, I there shall go!

Mirror me shining water:
This garland is my closest crown.
Would that my love were not so blooded,
That this my circlet might delight him.
Hello there! How pretty thou art!
Embrace me as thy sister,
My sometimes lover loves not one…no?
Embrace me sister…

A Poetic Response to "Romans"

Romans Pull Question: Free Verse Poem

Amid the paths you would choose,
Along a path that is no longer yours to decide,
You might run across the thorn
Or the flower, depending greatly
On the way you choose, depending
On the way chosen for you.

Should you run across the thorn,
Which is common to all though
Known in light only to few,
The blood drawn from the pinprick,
The infinite and life-robbing stab,
Might give you pause to ask,
Why this evil? Where is good?

You wouldn’t say this, but it
Is the life soul of all questions
You might choose to ask, but the
True intent of your inquiry has
Already been chosen for you.
In the infinite, life-robbing stare,
Where what should be sees in the
Glass a reflection of all that has been forgotten.

Between these two is an ocean
Of pain, the gulf of human suffering,
Taking not less than all that it may
Before leaving the body cold, though still alive,
Where the living are, and are not, but still are,
In the awful limbo of what you dared to ask.

Yet all shall be well
And all manner of thing shall be well.
As the question becomes nothing more
Than nothing. It is no longer you,
Nor your might that asks, for the
Question is a combination of mortality,
And forgotten reality.

But all shall be well, when the Griffin
And phoenix guide the remembering flock,
To the gate of all that matters,
And the earth smiles in a race now remembered,
Recalling itself the long years of fragile hope
And eager search.
Children knew of it, poets ran after it:
The hope of a race now realized.

And all shall be weighed on the scale
Which has forgotten iniquity, and the
Countermeasure is eternal glory, by which
Only the fools shall find justice.
For they are, and are not, but still are,
The called and chosen,
costing not less than death,
gaining not less than life.

Response to Shakespeare's "As You Like It"

Submitted for your loving critique: my "As You Like It" pull question

Hayden Butler

Mr. Llizo

Pull Question: As You Like It

Intention: To respond to the tutor’s question as to whether Biolans should get married before leaving the “Biola Bubble” in the form of a pseudo-Shakespearean poem. It follows the ABBBA rhyme scheme to reflect the loaded nature of the question and the subsequent loaded nature of the answer. The repetition of consonance in the middle lines of each stanza are meant to reflect a lofty tone for their subject matter. It is an exaggerated poem, and is intentionally so.

Oh to be a man in such a place!
The fairer sex doth flock as doves
While fairly tempting frequent loves
And man in winter study moves
To win the lusty springtime race.

Oh man, that in the court of class
Doth speak of such sweet celibacy
And shun that fancied intimacy
And spouting ‘tis not but fantasy
That withers quickly as the grass.’

How quick thou art to drop the guise
In spring, when lovers oft do seek,
With ring in hand and count’nance meek,
That flower that to thou didst reek.
The shift, meanwhile, doth lack surmise.

One should say, why doest thou this?
Thou art, as in a wood, wherein
The sunset penetrates; therein
Thou blind find none awry; herein
Rests the truth of thou fancied bliss.

Why, O man, enterest the wood of eros?
Is it likely that thou shalt never find
A dame and thus be left behind
While colleagues go forth flying blind,
Struck by the son of Venus’ arrows?

Wise art thou though thou knowest not why.
For thou the swaying woods deceive
And drifting leaves do grant reprieve
From humanity that oft does grieve.
Would thou love when thou knowest thou die?

Oh but love in the merciful wood,
Where sprights recall that fantasy,
That savors of true reality,
Though to the world is mere frivolity.
Oh but love in the merciful wood.

Cross Post: Brains Conquer Beauty?

While reading in the library today, I happened upon a copy of "Sacred History Magazine" that was on the table I was sitting at. As I was flipping through the pages, I came across an advertisement that caugt my attention. The title read, "Brains Conquer Beatuy." Apparently some scientists have discovered a way to make fake diamonds that "look even better than the vast majority of mined diamonds." They go on to state that "only experienced diamond appraisers...are able to make the distinction between a flawless natural diamond and the scientifically perfect" model from the lab.

I have seen real diamonds before. They are a beautiful stone. Held to light they are dazzling and contain colors that can shock even a creative imagination. yet I wonder if the claim of "perfection from the laboratory" is not bordering on some deeper concept.

It would seem important to remember that these lab diamonds , however wonderfully cut and clear, are still, at best, good imitations. I am not raising an indictment of the product or ones like it, which seem to be visually pleasing, but the fact that it is still a lab diamond makes it very different from a real diamond. Functionally, in sight and quality, for what it is, the lab diamond may be superb. Yet there is something tragic in the claim to have "cracked the code" of beauty. It reduces something beautiful to a mere function, in this case the appearance. Value then is found in the quality of the imitation.

My girlfriend, Melissa, is very, very beautiful. If cloning does eventually come about, and scientists in a lab somewhere begin advertising that 'brains have conquered beauty; we now have the ability to produce copies of Melissa at a low cost that is just as radiant as the original, but that does not ever get ill or grow tired.' How profoundly hideous! The good news here, folks, is that it is impossible to do this, because no lab could reproduce the subtlety or mystery or complexity, or any of the numberless qualities that work into what makes the brilliance of Melissa.

With the lab replicas of diamonds, scientists have an easier job that this. They do not have to make up for the mystery of the human soul. But they still have the tall, and in my opinion impossible, order of replicating the mystery of what makes a diamond truly beautiful. If it were really about the appearance alone, then there would not be so much mythos surrounding them. Can the lab re-create the awe and wonder that the seemingly chaotic pressures and forces in the earth could arrange something that is at the same time so delicate and yet so immensely strong? Can they copy the wonder that God would make room in his plan for something so seemingly gratuitous as this? The lab attempts to give the spledour of reality to an imitation. i ask, however, if it is better to merely experience, even if for a fleeting moment, something real, or to have possession and permanence of merely a dream?

Cross Post: "In an age barren of magic, where is our poetry?"

“In an age barren of magic, where is our poetry?”

This quote begs the immediate question, when we have removed the magic from our society and understanding of the world, what then will we compose about, what then will we sing about? The Norton Anthology of English Literature quotes that poetry devoid of this ‘magic’ will inevitable concern itself with death. Why is this? What is it about magic that keeps us from this inclination?

The subject of magic must be discussed carefully in a society divided amongst itself. For on one side there are those why have dedicated themselves to the destruction of magic, or faerie, the mythos and mystical part of the world, in its entirety. On another front are those who improperly limit magic and place rigid guidelines on what it is and what it is not. These people are closer to the truth, yet they are mistaken in their thinking that they can control faerie. Again, there are those who oppose magic because they misunderstand it, and fear it to a degree because it shakes their conception of the world and reality. These people are sometimes those that would ban books from being read because they use uncomfortable allegory or symbolism to convey truth. Then there are those who misunderstand and do horrible things with mythos. These are arguably the most dangerous people in the world, because they rightly understand that the world has magic in it, and that the soul requires the Great Myth for its very vitality, and yet they pervert this truth just enough to keep it compelling and yet unutterably dangerous. Lastly, there are those that seek the mythos, the magic of this time, and seek to properly understand what it is and what it is not, seeking to not divorce it from truth and goodness, but attempting to utilize it toward the end for which it was created: to save the soul.

Yet what shall happen in an age barren of magic; does poetry cease to be? It would seem almost better if this were so. Poetry is an extremely powerful device. For within its rhyme and reason is contained the power to ensnare the soul and bewitch the senses. People who are especially sensitive to this allure often stand apart and carry with them a sort of out-of-this-world quality. Artists are among them, musicians as well. Yet in a time when the soul of poetry itself, which requires magic as well, is starved of its bread and wine, a most dire chain is initiated. When the faerie in the world dies, so then does the soul of true poetry; that enchanting force with the power to wrest the soul’s attention. We then have the substance of something more like prose, and while it can imitate poetry to a large degree, it will always be lacking. Those artists that I mentioned above are the first to notice this, but often they do so cynically, not hoping for the return or seeking how they might bring it back. They almost resign themselves to an awful fate; and so with the loss of magic comes despair, for what, outside of the magical, can stand against the crushing hurt of this age? Then our poets turn to the hurt, the moldy bread, because eventually they forget the taste of meat and drink. We then have poetry obsessed with death, or perversion, or obscenity. Beauty evacuates, knowing that with the martyrdom of magic comes her own impending death sentence.

What, then, are we to do? We do not forget; we do not cease from our exploration. We find the Great Story, the Great Myth; the source of the longest river, the source of the world’s soul, the faerie, the very truth and nature of magic itself. For magic is the counterpart to material, and the two are siblings under the Fatherhood of the Creator. Plainly spoken, the Christian story, the Greatest Myth ever told, carries the only source of redemption strong enough to demolish the soul-deep boredom and pain and quandary that an age without magic instills in its artists, and to everyone else. This is our journey, our charge, our great exhortation: that through testimony the Great Story, to which true magic bows in humility, and by which bad magic is obliterated, the deep magic of redemption and ultimately glorification may come to the souls of men as initiated by the Greatest Poet to ever walk this earth.

I don't wanna grow up, I'm a...20-year-old?

Does it ever seem awkward when considering the place of life that we are currently at? Do you ever feel that you are in a limbo of sorts, that there is something deeply off with the requirements of our age group, and the longings within our hearts? It seems that there is an inherent awkwardness to the teenage years for the American youth, particularly here in Orange County. While it seems that we are more fit, have greater opportunities, and are situated in one of the most beautiful places in this part of the world, there comes too a prevalence of sloth, apathy, and lack of appreciation. So where did we get off track?

It seems that inherent to the teenage age group, mainly from the ages of 15-19, there is a pervasive lack of confidence and expectation. So often have I heard parent's talking in a coffee shop about the problems of their teens being "just a phase" or simply sigh and say "teenagers..." Yet does it make any real sense to have a designated time of life post infancy, where serious behavioral problems are observed and noted without attributing anything to them but a sigh of frustration and an offhand remark? As teenagers, myself being in my last year of that age, we must ask, what are we really?

We are adolescent minds in rapidly maturing bodies...often. While we cannot stop the growth of the latter (guys who have had their voice crack at inopportune moments may have wished for this at one point or another), we oftentimes neglect the former. Yet ought we not grow hollistically? Are we not less of a whole being if our body is fully grown and yet our minds remain two to four years behind? Of course we are. Yet it seems that the teenage designation is producing people of this mindset. Oftentimes the ability to think is confused with the ability to recite a maxim or two about life (with the hope of gaining a reverent silence or approval), and make the claim that one has to shave every day (sorry ladies).

Perhaps it would be good to describe ourselves in what this time is, or ought to be about. For most Southern Californian teens, the latter years of this awkward time are spent in high school, living with our parents, perhaps preparing for college, or perhaps wondering what mom and dad will do if I should happen to not go to college. The party line of teens in high school is..."I cannot wait till I get out of high school," or "things will be so much better when high school is over." I am guilty of reciting these lines myself. But do we really know what that means? Do we know what we are calling down upon ourselves?

I was ready for high school to be over when I was 16. It was partially because of my 'teenage' rebelliousness, but a lot of it as well had to do with a desire to get out of this, 'you're a kid, but not a kid, but still a kid,' stage.

I recognize, and all my age ought to as well, that we are still learning. We are learning very much every day, or ought to be. It is an awful prospect for me to think that I shall stop learning in this life. But there comes a point where one has to detach from the veiled impunity of teen-dom and step forward into life's arena. This concept of the teenager is allowing one to lackdaisically float through a time of life that is critical developmentally. Are we as a society building young adults, or are we growing big kids? When one is faced with college, a vocation, family, does one really feel comfortable saying "mommy, wow, I'm a big kid now?"