dropping the "G" word

Imagine you (or I, or anyone for that matter) were bred from the earliest of your recollectable days to long to fall in love with a woman named Cindy.
You dreamt of a Cindy in your adolescence and chased after Cindy's on the play ground in your youth. You could imagine calling your lover by no other name. A woman's quality, apparent upon your initial interactions with her, all but vanished when she stated her name to be something other than Cindy. You were taught and tied into the endeavor of loving a woman with this name.

Imagine a string of romantic experiences that you have as you wander the earth, each very genuine, each passionate and hopeful. You encounter a woman (avoid the preliminary introductions) share experiences with her, fall authentically in love with her. Then you ask her name and it is not Cindy. So you leave her -- you leave the romance, the authenticity, the passion, the hope, the experience, the love all behind. And you do it again. And again. None of them turn out to be Cindy.

So you take a different approach. You seek out women named Cindy. You find a Cindy and you pursue her, date her, kiss her, introduce her to your family -- "This is Cindy" -- move in with her, share life with her. But it is all contrived, so you leave her for another woman named Cindy and do it again. And again. None of them coax love from you (and incidentally neither do you do much for them, so don't feel too cocky).

Imagine your broken and lonely state of being. Imagine having given up true love several times over. Imagine having placed your hope in an idea so resolutely time and again, and time and again it being returned to you void. And imagine in this grim state as you travel the globe with your seemingly hopeless cause set before you that you wander into a library in Frankfurt and select a volume of fairy tales; hoping to find something to quell the sting, to find inspiration from these stories of eerily unlikely events.

Flipping through the book you find her. Cindy, or in her fullness Cinderella, cinder-ella, the girl of the cinders, girl of the ashes. And -- ashes to ashes, dust to dust -- you realize that every woman you sought, those you loved and those you didn't (those who loved you and those who didn't) was Cindy, each a daughter of the earth, each human.
So you siphon your focus on the name into a more expansive focus on the experience of love. And you fulfill your destiny.

ufc with yhwh

i had a sweet wreck the other day. i was biking from work to meet lauren at a coffee shop, hauling downhill on 10th street. i decided to take a short cut along the pedestrian route so i glanced back to check traffic, crossed over and hopped up onto the sidewalk. it was raining and i took a sharp turn left a little too fast, my back tire slid out and my front tire buckled and i went down and skidded like 15 feet. i hopped up and had one of the moments of "am i ok? i'm ok. really? am i? i am." and then the obligatory bashful look around to see if anyone saw (no one did), unjammed my chain, hopped back on, thanked God i was wearing denim and a tough jacket, said, "that was awesome", and continued (with a touch more care) on my merry way.
it felt really good. i haven't wiped out for a while. i had a couple wrecks in college that were really sweet (one forward somersault with feet still in toe clips, took a big divot out of the woman's field hockey field at the bottom of our ski slope at houghton, i saved the divot because we had found a lizard and seth fancy and i set up a little island in a bowl of water for him, but he escaped and lived a better life than either of us ever could have given him), but it's been a good long while since i really skinned my knees. what's the appeal i wonder? it's not a desire for pain. just for contact, friction, resistance.
like the part in philip pullman's "the subtle knife" when william struggles, unbeknownst to him, with his father. like the story in the bible where jacob wrestles God. clings to God, makes demands of God, gets his hip broken by God. i don't talk about God on a daily basis anymore, not like i did when it was my homework to do so, when the community i belonged to made a practice of it. but i still like meeting for wrestling matches, smiles and dirt smeared across our faces, the two of us rolling around without much to talk about but with plenty in common. God letting me win sometimes, i letting God win sometimes.
i don't distinguish much between God and Life. like i don't hold to God as a human-like being with arms and legs that wrap around me in the fight. the events and experiences of God wrap around me, they are what i pull against or give in to. and i think that's how God likes it.. as in, i think that's how Life is done best.
i got an opportunity to sit with Life for a while a couple weekends ago, i had our little cottage to myself and i rested. sat across from Life for an evening and a morning and lingered in Its presence, feeling the surge of my own muscles for a change, rather than the push of Life's muscle on me.
i'm back in it again, wrestling again.. smiling, grimacing, struggling, collapsing. but really glad that we took some respite.