Like so many disciplines, writing is off and on again.
Over the years I have tried various methods to create some consistency but I fear it will never be more than what it is now: Scraps and Samples.
I'm mostly alright with it.
As I burrow further into late-middle age, I find I am becoming "alright" with things more often. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes it's bad, but it's the nature of being a rookie Old Man.
You're ALWAYS a rookie in some context. There's always some aspect of your life that is new, no matter how stayed and boring your life may seem, the fact that you live in temporal context means that something you've never seen before is emerging right now.
THAT was a Scrap.
Here's a Sample:
The rhetoric of the flesh is variable from man to man. Some are refined and nuanced. If viewed from a distance, they appear monolithic. From close up, however, we see a meticulously sorted collection of pieces obsessively arranged to appear whole. Imagine a huge wine rack: many different kinds of the same thing in fragile vessels. Some just for display, some to be consumed crouching alone in the darkness.
Other men's rhetoric looks a junk yard. Parts of an old car here, an abandoned appliance there, piles of scrap lumber, pipe and sundries. It too is a mosaic and though less pretty than a wine collection, it serves a no less refined fetish. The collector knows precisely where each trinket lies and can dart straight to it if needed to satisfy a voyeur, or secretly satisfy himself.
The rhetoric of the spirit, however, is singular. Whole. One. Fully integrated. It is an element of it's own definition. Irreducible. It cannot be divided into its component parts because there are no components. It can not be distilled, dissected or held in solution. It can not be navigated because its beginning is precisely the same as its end. There is no distance to travel across it. There is no "across" it.
It cannot be displayed. It is not curated by the possessor. In fact, it does the possessing. Whereas the rhetoric of the flesh is chosen and arranged by the collector, the rhetoric of the Spirit simply is.
The rhetoric of the flesh holds out promises but it contains no hope. There is always just "one more" there is always "a little adjustment here or there". There is always someone else in the way of the flesh delivering on what it promised. There is always someone else to blame. The rhetoric of the flesh always has an excuse, always has justifications, and always has the REAL solution...just around the next bend, just inside the next doorway; just one more roll of the dice, just one more bite, just one more year of toil and Rachel will be yours...the rhetoric of the flesh should be named Laban.
I will be depositing Scraps and Samples here...not in an effort to build my own rhetoric of flesh. But simply to dispose of them; and in doing so, with God's grace, find a rhetoric of the Spirit.
