Dimly Lit

It’s not as though I’ve been posting a lot lately anyway, but I’m outta here for the next week. I’ll be spending my time trying to forget about computers and technology and all that, so don’t expect any posts around these parts for a few days!

I stumbled across this a couple of weeks ago over on The Roughwoodsman and meant to post something then. That was right about the time the wicked witch of depression turned me into a newt so I never got around to it. But I got better.

Now Richard Louv, the author of the book “Last Child in the Woods” that was referenced above, has an article Orion Magazine about the Orion > Orion Magazine > July | August 2005 > Richard Louv > Nature Deficit with which most kids, and indeed a lot of adults, seem to be afflicted. The article is interesting dealing primarily with the issue of ADD/ADHD and why there has been such a spike in diagnosis and medication over the past several years. Louv acknowledges the critics that say that the reporting on ADD is skewed. That ADD has always been with us, it just wasn’t diagnosed correctly until recently or that it is being vastly over-diagnosed recently. But then Louv goes on to point out some interesting research that seems to link ADD/ADHD symptoms with a lack of time spent in nature and a reduction of those symptoms when children engage with nature.

This kind of stuff definitely plays to my desire to get the heck out of Dodge and build a house on a couple of acres of wooded land. I know that living in the city doesn’t preclude my kids from spending time outdoors - after all we do have a back yard, a small one, but a yard none-the-less. There is also a great park just a couple blocks away, but I still find that it requires more planning and scheduling to get the kids into a “restorative environment” without preset, directed, programs.

Whatever the case, I’ll be getting some nature therapy next week as we head down to Tablerock lake for a week with family. I’m looking forward to it.

Hannah has escaped to the lake with my parents and her cousins for the week and had the audacity to take her copy of the latest Harry Potter with her. Yes, I’m a fan, and yes, I’m looking forward to reading it as soon as I can wrench it from her hands - or she finishes.

In the meantime, Jerram Barrs of the Francis Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Seminary has a good article over at Christian Counterculture that’s worth checking out.

and I don’t write, don’t post anything. Thoughts seem, at times, to bounce around my head, but I can’t get them out. When I do post it’s some rambling, unedited stream of consciousness crap that’s mildy cathartic but otherwise boring.

At night I fall asleep in a chair or on the couch once Max is in bed, or escape to the oblivion of a movie in order to run away from life.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. By the time you hit 34 years old aren’t you supposed to feel comfortable in your own skin? Shouldn’t I be satisfied with who I’ve become, even if it isn’t the person I thought I’d be?

I watch the days pass from the oh-so-cozy comfort of my 4X4 cubicle, counting the minutes until I can escape from this place. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
I have a wonderful family - an understanding, wise, beautiful wife; a near teenage daughter who has become a mature wonderful young lady seemingly overnight; and a precocious, bright toddler who makes me smile and want to pull my hair out at the same time. What do I want?

Melissa said a couple of days ago that one of the problems is that I am spending too much time focused on myself. We are called to give up our selves, to die to our selves and spend the currency of our lives on others. By not doing that I am turned inside out and it hurts, but I don’t know how to stop.

I’m sure something crazy like prayer and scripture has something to do with it.

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Tom Waits,
originally uploaded by Ron Nelson.

I never saw the morning ’til I stayed up all night
I never saw the sunshine ’til you turned out the light
I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long
I never heard the melody, until I needed a song.

I never saw the white line, ’til I was leaving you behind
I never knew I needed you ’til I was caught up in a bind
I never spoke ’i love you’ ’til I cursed you in vain,
I never felt my heartstrings until I nearly went insane.

I never saw the east coast ’til I move to the west
I never saw the moonlight until it shone off your breast
I never saw your heart ’til someone tried to steal,
Tried to steal it away
I never saw your tears until they rolled down your face.

It’s been hard to blog this week. Haven’t been able to get back into the swing of things, so to speak. I have been busy, trying to get caught up after all of the recent travel. Projects are due and in need of attention, etc. But I don’t think that’s the reason. The real reason is that I’ve spent more time daydreaming this week and blog surfing than anything else. A sort of escapism.

The daydreaming has typically involved about 10 acres, a nice farm pond or stream, and lots of space for my kids (and my wife and me) to explore the world. I love the outdoors and grew up in a smaller town with a lake in my backyard and black lab as one of my best friends. There are many things I enjoy about living in St. Louis. I live a couple of blocks from the Missouri Botanical Garden in one direction and Tower Grove park in another. The city library system has been wonderful - especially for my lovely bookworm of a wife and our homeschooled daughter. But there is a scriptedness to these things. They have to be planned to some degree rather than the spontaneous exploration of walking out your back door and finding a whole world staring back. And so I daydream of land, maybe not 10 acres but certainly more than the postage stamp sized, privacy-fenced yard that is currently my kingdom.

The blog-surfing is just fun. There are so many good sites out there. So many good writers. I find myself just working my way down the links on all of the sites that I enjoy and admiring the pictures and wonderful sentences that I find. Annie Dillard once asked an aspiring writer, I think it was in The Writing Life, if he loved sentences. In reading many of these bloggers it is very clear that many of you truly love sentences. There are many wonderful writers hanging around various corners of the web.

One of the problems I have with reading so much good writing is that I become very shy about putting my own words out there for examination. I’ve said for a long time that I want to write, even if only for myself. I tell myself that I’m not writing to be published, I’m just throwing words out there because in my little world that is one of the few things that really makes sense for me to do. I’m writing because God for some strange reason gave me the desire to, and that’s all I need.

But of course that’s not really true. I write because of pride. I often write because I want to write like Frederick Buechner, Annie Dillard, or John McPhee. Then I throw my hands up in frustration because, of course, I’m not Frederick Buechner, Annie Dillard, or John McPhee and therefore don’t sound much like them when I write.

So in the end, I guess I’ve written all of this in order to say that I haven’t written much because I’m insecure. If my memory serves, it was Thumper who said, “If you can’t say something nice… don’t say nothing at all.”. Well, my tendency is to tweak that slightly and say instead, “If you can’t write something well… don’t write nothing at all.”