There is no high road.

I started reading Romans (again) this week, and out of curiosity, looked up chapter 2 in "The Message" paraphrase. Boy, did they take a clear and stinging tone with it. I have to wonder if Paul intended it to be that blunt.


But at the same time, it does give a little clarity into the modern nuances of the passage. Check it out:

1 Those people are on a dark spiral downward. But if you think that leaves you on the high ground where you can point your finger at others, think again. Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors.2 But God isn't so easily diverted. He sees right through all such smoke screens and holds you to what you've done.

3 You didn't think, did you, that just by pointing your finger at others you would distract God from seeing all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard?4 Or did you think that because he's such a nice God, he'd let you off the hook? Better think this one through from the beginning. God is kind, but he's not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change.

5 You're not getting by with anything. Every refusal and avoidance of God adds fuel to the fire. The day is coming when it's going to blaze hot and high, God's fiery and righteous judgment.6 Make no mistake: In the end you get what's coming to you -7 Real Life for those who work on God's side,8 but to those who insist on getting their own way and take the path of least resistance, Fire!

9 If you go against the grain, you get splinters, regardless of which neighborhood you're from, what your parents taught you, what schools you attended.10 But if you embrace the way God does things, there are wonderful payoffs, again without regard to where you are from or how you were brought up.11 Being a Jew won't give you an automatic stamp of approval. God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you. He makes up his own mind.

It's been a while since I've had the desire to read Scripture, but my heart is thirsty and craves truth. Dave and I had a wonderful afternoon Sunday talking with a friend over things that were deeper and more mysterious than we know. And from that, I'm just aching for more. I miss school for that reason, I think: the challenge to think and think beyond where you've thought before. So Romans ought to kickstart some thinking. At least, I'm praying that it does.

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.

I keep finding myself face-to-face with my failings lately.  I know things should change, and I try to change them, but I have not been asking for help from my Back Up like I used to.  I haven't been talking to Dad as often as I want to - it's like Frank said once, "We stop praying because things are kind of ok, and then when we think about praying it's scary and we don't want to so we put it off some more."


It's like being an artist: I have an idea - a beautiful, new idea - and I want desperately to start working on it, so desperately that I arrange all my tools and the bits that I'm going to use and set up the workspace and make the time in my calendar and then...Then I can't touch knife to paper, I can't properly mix the colors, I can't choose the bits that are most important.  And the thing that holds me back is fear.


I'm like that in relationships, too.  I spend time with someone, I like them and they like me, and we talk about being more serious.  And I want - I ache for - that.  But then it comes right down to it, and I start thinking about all the ways that I could hurt them or they could hurt me and how we'd be much safer if we waited or just didn't... Fear.


Since my last relationship ended, Dad's taught me a lot about fear.  Mostly in financial and job situations.  I am terrified of money - I loathe it.  But it's entirely necessary.  And I'm scared to interview, to start a new job, but new jobs mean pay raises, and pay raises mean more money, and more money means less fear (supposedly).  We worked through all that, He and I.  Now I have a new job and a good salary and more than I could have asked for.  And you'd think I could apply those lessons to relationships, to art, to life.  But I can't - at least not fully or well.


I'm taking steps at least - in a couple areas.  I'm working on hiring an illustrator for one of my shorter pieces.  And I'm going to try the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) - it's November (and there are no penalties for failing - only good can come of that one).  And we're moving forward on house buying talks.  *Sigh.  Hi, my name's Jess, and I'm a chicken.

And they are asking this of someone who finds it endlessly mysterious.

I spent my lunch hour perched on a rock by the river, a book open in my lap.  But I alternated between the lazy scrolling of words on the page and the black butterflies drifting through the kudzu.  Leaf-shaped, silver-sided fish glinted along the fallen logs in the shallows below me.  Three turtles scrambled up on a half-submerged tree, and I spent a lot of time watching their backs dry in the sun.  A secretive rustling in the leaves at my feet eventually materialized into a long, blue-tailed lizard who clawed delicately over a neighboring rock.

I was struck by how still everything was - almost as if the river absorbed unnecessary sounds and swirled them off downstream.  Even the traffic up the hill from me was hushed.  It was a beautiful christening of the first day of autumn, a cool drink of the peace I crave, a tree-filtered sunshine afternoon.

**Headline taken from Ann Beattie's essay, "Melancholy and the Muse" in Unholy Ghosts: Writers on Depression, by Nell Casey (2003).