the tide pools

The northwest shore of St. Croix can be very treacherous. The rolling hills of that corner of the island spill violently into the ocean (and continue steeply downward into the Virgin Islands Trough at 13,000 feet below sea level). This rocky shore, just east of Annalay Bay, is home to the tide pools.

Over time, the force of the ocean has built up walls of jagged rocks a good distance away from the cliffs that extend to the top of the hills above. The waves still occasionally spill over these walls, creating large pools in the sandy craters.

Here is a bird's eye view. Press the (+) to zoom directly in on the pools (The "A" is the farm):


View Larger Map

During my last weekend on the island, I took a trip to these pools with my friends Patrick and Ryan. We hiked from the farm to the pools and spent an hour or so playing in the water, climbing the wall of rocks, and waiting for huge waves to crash into the rocks and splash foam in our faces. It was so much fun....




...Until we built up our pride a little too much and ventured further west. This side of the pool was much more exposed to the crashing waves. With Ryan and Patrick just behind me, I climbed up the wall and started walking along the top. Before I had time to realize what was happening, a wave thundered over the wall and lifted me into the air. The sheer force of the wave was the most physical energy I'd ever felt in my entire life. I was a rag-doll.

Then came the thud. My body flew off the wall to the rocks 8 feet below, my left shoulder and butt taking the brunt of the blow. Somehow my head had missed hitting anything, but as I lay there, I realized I could barely move. Another wave exploded over the wall, surrounding my limp body with salty foam that forced its way into my eyes and mouth. Several long seconds later, I was able to bring my head above water and gasp for air, preparing for another wave.

Apparently the monster waves come in pairs, because no other wave came close to the clout of those first two. Patrick and Ryan looked down at me with stunned looks on their faces. The wave missed Patrick, and Ryan was barely able to grab a hold of the wall with his finger tips at the last moment. He was bloody from cuts, but had been able to remain firmly on top of the wall. I was the only one to be launched into the air.

With much pain and effort, I was finally able to wiggle my toes, lift myself off the rocks, and hobble to the safety of my cabana on the farm. I will never forget the feeling of utter helplessness I had as that wave picked me up and thrashed me around as if I were a speck of dust in the wind.

Here is a video that Ryan took when we first arrived at the pools. The large waves in this footage were nothing compared to the monsters that came later:



I spent my last two days on the farm mostly bedridden. It wasn't until weeks later, at a church service at Grace Center that the pain finally left my body. I, seriously and without drama, thank God that I didn't die that day. If I had landed any other way, I very easily could have.

letters of note

Shaun Usher is the blogger behind the relatively new site, Letters of Note. He provides a very interesting look at history through "correspondence deserving of a wider audience." Everyone from Jeff Buckley to Jack the Ripper have letters posted. Here are a few particularly neat-o ones:

Ghandi to Hitler

September 1st, 1939: Poland is invaded by Germany, resulting in what many believe to be the beginning of World War II. Just over a month before this happens, Mahatma Gandhi writes the first of two letters to Adolf Hitler in an attempt to prevent the oncoming war. This particular letter never reaches Hitler due to an intervention by the government. More information here.


Transcript:

As at Wardha,
C. P.,
23-7-'39

Dear friend,

Friends have been urging me to write to you for the sake of humanity. But I have resisted their request, because of the feeling that any letter from me would be an impertinence. Something tells me that I must not calculate and that I must make my appeal for whatever it may be worth.

It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to a savage state. Must you pay that price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success? Any way I anticipate your forgiveness, if I have erred in writing to you.

I remain,

Your sincere friend

M. K. Gandhi

HERR HITLER
BERLIN
GERMANY.
____________________

Philip K. Dick to the production company for the film Blade Runner

Blade Runner, a movie still regarded by many as the greatest science fiction film ever made, was based on the novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep. Its author, Philip K. Dick, had been extremely apprehensive of a future adaptation but wrote the following letter to the film's production company after catching his first glimpse of the movie during a television programme. He passed away just 5 months later, 4 months before the movie was released.



Transcript:

October 11, 1981

Mr. Jeff Walker,
The Ladd Company,
4000 Warner Boulevard,
Burbank,
Calif. 91522.

Dear Jeff,

I happened to see the Channel 7 TV program "Hooray For Hollywood" tonight with the segment on BLADE RUNNER. (Well, to be honest, I didn't happen to see it; someone tipped me off that BLADE RUNNER was going to be a part of the show, and to be sure to watch.) Jeff, after looking --and especially after listening to Harrison Ford discuss the film-- I came to the conclusion that this indeed is not science fiction; it is not fantasy; it is exactly what Harrison said: futurism. The impact of BLADE RUNNER is simply going to be overwhelming, both on the public and on creative people -- and, I believe, on science fiction as a field. Since I have been writing and selling science fiction works for thirty years, this is a matter of some importance to me. In all candor I must say that our field has gradually and steadily been deteriorating for the last few years. Nothing that we have done, individually or collectively, matches BLADE RUNNER. This is not escapism; it is super realism, so gritty and detailed and authentic and goddam convincing that, well, after the segment I found my normal present-day "reality" pallid by comparison. What I am saying is that all of you collectively may have created a unique new form of graphic, artistic expression, never before seen. And, I think, BLADE RUNNER is going to revolutionize our conceptions of what science fiction is and, more, can be.

Let me sum it up this way. Science fiction has slowly and ineluctably settled into a monotonous death: it has become inbred, derivative, stale. Suddenly you people have come in, some of the greatest talents currently in existence, and now we have a new life, a new start. As for my own role in the BLADE RUNNER project, I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning dimensions. My life and creative work are justified and completed by BLADE RUNNER. Thank you..and it is going to be one hell of a commercial success. It will prove invincible.

Cordially,

Philip K. Dick
____________________

J.D Salinger to Mr. Stevens, a young fan



Transcript:

Oct. 21, 1962

Dear Mr. Stevens,

I must tell you first, offputtingly or no, that I am at best a one-shot letter writer, these days. Along with that, I really never have anything to say when I`m done writing fiction at the end of a day. One thought, and one only, hits me about your letter. Entirely "materialistic," I'm afraid. You need a new typewriter ribbon. Get one or don't get one, but unless you make an effort to deal with things as unabstractly as that, you're stewing quite unnecessarily. You've decided that Things are what matter to people. Of course. Not only with "people" but with you, too. Everything in your letter is a thing, concrete or abstract. Avidya and vidya are things. For me, before anything else, you're a young man who needs a new typewriter ribbon. See that fact, and don't attach more significance to it than it deserves, and then get on with the rest of the day. Good wishes to you.

(Signed, 'JDS')


Many, many more letters can be read here.

lord, save us from your followers

This is a great article from Esquire Magazine written by Shane Claiborne (Jesus for President, The Irresistible Revolution). Thanks to Lori for sharing the article.


What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff?

This radical Christian's ministry for the poor, The Simple Way, has gotten him in some trouble with his fellow Evangelicals. [Esquire Magazine] asked him to address those who don't believe:

To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.

Forgive us. Forgive us for the embarrassing things we have done in the name of God.

The other night I headed into downtown Philly for a stroll with some friends from out of town. We walked down to Penn's Landing along the river, where there are street performers, artists, musicians. We passed a great magician who did some pretty sweet tricks like pour change out of his iPhone, and then there was a preacher. He wasn't quite as captivating as the magician. He stood on a box, yelling into a microphone, and beside him was a coffin with a fake dead body inside. He talked about how we are all going to die and go to hell if we don't know Jesus.

Some folks snickered. Some told him to shut the hell up. A couple of teenagers tried to steal the dead body in the coffin. All I could do was think to myself, I want to jump up on a box beside him and yell at the top of my lungs, "God is not a monster." Maybe next time I will.

The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less fascinating. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the sort of Christianity many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like Jesus.

At one point Gandhi was asked if he was a Christian, and he said, essentially, "I sure love Jesus, but the Christians seem so unlike their Christ." A recent study showed that the top three perceptions of Christians in the U. S. among young non-Christians are that Christians are 1) antigay, 2) judgmental, and 3) hypocritical. So what we have here is a bit of an image crisis, and much of that reputation is well deserved. That's the ugly stuff. And that's why I begin by saying that I'm sorry.

Now for the good news.

I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and street preachers are wrong — and that God really is love. Maybe the fruits of the Spirit really are beautiful things like peace, patience, kindness, joy, love, goodness, and not the ugly things that have come to characterize religion, or politics, for that matter. (If there is anything I have learned from liberals and conservatives, it's that you can have great answers and still be mean... and that just as important as being right is being nice.)

The Bible that I read says that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save it... it was because "God so loved the world." That is the God I know, and I long for others to know. I did not choose to devote my life to Jesus because I was scared to death of hell or because I wanted crowns in heaven... but because he is good. For those of you who are on a sincere spiritual journey, I hope that you do not reject Christ because of Christians. We have always been a messed-up bunch, and somehow God has survived the embarrassing things we do in His name. At the core of our "Gospel" is the message that Jesus came "not [for] the healthy... but the sick." And if you choose Jesus, may it not be simply because of a fear of hell or hope for mansions in heaven.

Don't get me wrong, I still believe in the afterlife, but too often all the church has done is promise the world that there is life after death and use it as a ticket to ignore the hells around us. I am convinced that the Christian Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but about bringing God's Kingdom down. It was Jesus who taught us to pray that God's will be done "on earth as it is in heaven." On earth.

One of Jesus' most scandalous stories is the story of the Good Samaritan. As sentimental as we may have made it, the original story was about a man who gets beat up and left on the side of the road. A priest passes by. A Levite, the quintessential religious guy, also passes by on the other side (perhaps late for a meeting at church). And then comes the Samaritan... you can almost imagine a snicker in the Jewish crowd. Jews did not talk to Samaritans, or even walk through Samaria. But the Samaritan stops and takes care of the guy in the ditch and is lifted up as the hero of the story. I'm sure some of the listeners were ticked. According to the religious elite, Samaritans did not keep the right rules, and they did not have sound doctrine... but Jesus shows that true faith has to work itself out in a way that is Good News to the most bruised and broken person lying in the ditch.

It is so simple, but the pious forget this lesson constantly. God may indeed be evident in a priest, but God is just as likely to be at work through a Samaritan or a prostitute. In fact the Scripture is brimful of God using folks like a lying prostitute named Rahab, an adulterous king named David... at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey. Some say God spoke to Balaam through his ass and has been speaking through asses ever since. So if God should choose to use us, then we should be grateful but not think too highly of ourselves. And if upon meeting someone we think God could never use, we should think again.

After all, Jesus says to the religious elite who looked down on everybody else: "The tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom ahead of you." And we wonder what got him killed?

I have a friend in the UK who talks about "dirty theology" — that we have a God who is always using dirt to bring life and healing and redemption, a God who shows up in the most unlikely and scandalous ways. After all, the whole story begins with God reaching down from heaven, picking up some dirt, and breathing life into it. At one point, Jesus takes some mud, spits in it, and wipes it on a blind man's eyes to heal him. (The priests and producers of anointing oil were not happy that day.)

In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay "out there" but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, "Nothing good could come." It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society's rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.

It is this Jesus who was born in a stank manger in the middle of a genocide. That is the God that we are just as likely to find in the streets as in the sanctuary, who can redeem revolutionaries and tax collectors, the oppressed and the oppressors... a God who is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and some of us from the ghettos of wealth.

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, "I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you." If those of us who believe in God do not believe God's grace is big enough to save the whole world... well, we should at least pray that it is.

Your brother,

Shane

This article reminded me of the film (that I haven't seen yet), Lord, Save Us From Your Followers:

a big vacuous pile of red and green treacle

When I was a kid, Christmas was always my favorite time of year. Perhaps that (coupled with the anticipation of snowfall) is why I consistently claimed winter was my favorite season. Obviously, I loved getting presents, but what I loved most was that feeling of warmth and family (and hot chocolate) that always put me in a little emotional cocoon.

Now that I am an adult (apparently I am), I have to deal with the other side of Christmas. The dark side, if you will. Without the spin of the Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas record or the feeling of complete contentment from a stocking full of baseball cards there to comfort me, shopping and over-eating and Hallmark movies and gift budgets and company Christmas luncheons and television commercials and the lack of snow can start to weigh down on me in a big vacuous pile of red and green treacle (a new word I just learned - look it up!).

But it doesn't have to be that way. Christmas actually does mean something. Now that I am adult, I can understand that. Perhaps someday I can enjoy the season on a spiritual and emotional level without reverting completely to the spiritual and emotional state of a five-year-old. Yes, someday I will figure it out. I'll just sit on my rocking chair, drink my cider, praise God for sending his Son, and listen to Audrey as she fiddles up some foot-stompin' tunes.

Until then, I'm just going to love this article written by Cathleen Falsani, the Religion Columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Gap Ads Reduce Holidays To Treacly Meaninglessness

There are only 35 shopping days left until Christmas. I'm keenly aware of this primarily because of those overcaffeinated Glee-show-choir-in-red-white-and-blue-alpine-sweaters-and-ear-flaps-making-high school-cheerleading-pyramids Gap ads that started running about a week ago.

You know, the ones where they chant a little ditty titled, annoyingly, "Happy Dowhateveryouwannukah."

"Go Christmas! Go Hannukah! Go Kwanzaa! Go Solstice!" the exceptionally good-looking, multicultural, skinny-jeans-clad cheerbots shout.

"You 86 the rules, you do what just feels right," they cheer, before entreating us to "do whatever [we] wannukkah" this ambiguous winter holiday season.

Their jangly dance number ends by wishing us "a cheery night."

How festive, you say?

Meh. Notsomuch.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those paranoid religious folks who believes that there is an organized effort to take the Christ out of Christmas orchestrated by a clandestine cabal of secular humanist movie moguls, feminists and vegetarians who plot their nefarious attack on family values (and the Baby Jesus) in triannual meetings at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows, to paraphrase a brilliant line from the movie "So I Married an Axe Murderer."

I am no proponent of the alleged "War on Christmas."

And I'm all for inclusiveness and multiculturalism, as much as I am for inexpensive cotton T-shirts and reindeer-themed boxer shorts.

But this year's Gap "holiday" ad campaign just rubs me the wrong way.

In its effort, I would surmise, to be inclusive and inoffensive, the Gap has made the mortal advertising (and cultural) error of being twee. Not to mention spiritually facile.

While they all occur around the same time of the year, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa and Winter Solstice hardly carry the same spiritual weight.

Christmas celebrates the miraculous birth of a savior come to redeem the world. Hannukah, while also commemorating a miracle (a one-day supply of oil for a lamp in the temple lasted eight days) and the victory of the Jewish rebellion over the Hellenistic rulers of Jerusalem, it is a minor holiday, not to be compared to the High Holidays of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur or the major festivals, Sukkot and Passover.

Kwanzaa is a nonreligious festival, begun in 1966 and celebrated nearly exclusively in the United States, which celebrates African-American culture and values. Winter Solstice marks the shortest day of the year and the longest night of the year and is for many pagans and neo-pagans the symbolic and spiritual rebirth of the year.

While each of these holidays, for lack of a more universally applicable term, is significant to different groups of believers (and nonbelievers, for that matter) they are not spiritual equivalents.

Still, I have no problem with all four being mentioned in the same context when we're talking about the things people celebrate this time of year. That's valid and correct.

What isn't, however, is the notion that any of these holidays espouse the idea, explicitly or implicitly, of doing "what just feels right" or "whatever we want"-ukah.

Unless we're meant to be concelebrating Bacchanalia or -- and this is even a stretch -- Mardi Gras, nothing in the Christian, Jewish and pagan traditions or the African-American cultural ideals that Kwanzaa celebrates would encourage the faithful to throw all rules out the window and do whatever feels good, man.

If that were true, the Gap ad would have done well to end with an Ayn Rand look-alike in a Santa hat and white beard driving a sled pulled by 12 tiny flying armadillos.

Christmas is about selflessness and transformative love, the improbable gift of a divine baby born into straw poverty in order to reconcile the world back to God. We do celebrate Christ's birth by giving something to each other to commemorate that epic, divine gift. But it's not supposed to pivot around the exchange of material goods, and it's definitely not about sweaters and turtlenecks.

Hannukah is about power of perseverance, faith and righteousness to overcome tyranny. It's about a small miracle that changes everything. The seven principles of Kwanzaa are: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith. Those principles are pretty much the direct opposite of the idea of "do whatever you want." And Solstice is, first and foremost, a natural, communal, Earth-centered event. Nothing about ushering in the death of the old year and the birth of the new says "fleece hoodies" to me.

The "Dowhateveryouwannukah" spots have made me think twice about where I'll purchase any last-minute stocking stuffers this year. But not for the same reason as that of the perennial saber-rattling "pro-family" organization the American Family Association, which, it brags, has been for 32 years "on the frontlines of the American culture war."

Earlier this month the association called for a two-month boycott of the Gap because of its "censorship of the word 'Christmas' " in its ads.

Oops!

The Gap ad campaign (which began running a few days after the association's clarion call for a boycott) says "Christmas" repeatedly, and that's precisely my problem with it. The use of the word "Christmas" -- and "Hannukah," "Kwanzaa" and "Solstice" for that matter -- is so flippant and false that the cheerbots might as well be shouting "Go Hippopotamus!" instead of "Go Christmas!"

I'd much prefer a heartfelt "Happy Holidays" to this faux-inclusive, hodgepodge of treacly meaninglessness.

Rather than an inviting cup of steaming Wassail to which everyone is welcome, the Gap's "Dowhateveryouwannukah" is little more than a strangely saccharin fruitcake that appeals to no one.

Amen, Cathleen!

And here's the Gap television spot under scrutiny:

the hogslop string band

I met a couple of these guys last night, in a seemingly random situation. Tell me this doesn't look like a good time....