Manifold colors, underlying unities

Even if all the trees were pens and the ocean ink, backed up by seven more oceans, the words of God would not be exhausted. — Qur’an 31:27

Another late Sunday evening, but a good one.  Indeed, a weekend of good late evenings, ripe with meaningful conversation and encounter.  And the days, too, have been lush, but with work — for job, for school, for life.  And while others lament the coming winter, I am finally, quietly, defiant, like the blazing colors of the autumnal trees.  November has always been my favorite month, and not simply because it is my birthmonth.  The manifold colors reveal underyling unities, and with them, new focus.

The hidden river

“It is in the watches of the night that impressions are strongest and words most eloquent; in the day-time you are hard pressed with the affairs of this world.” – Quran, sura 73

It’s a full moon over Leuven tonight.  The small city is quiet, gently illuminated.  Between the Question and the Debate, between the why do i exist? and the contest of faith and reason, there is another space.  And underneath the quivering ego’s thirst for justification flows a river, subterranean and brisk — the one true drink.

A wrong turn in Israel

Here is a story for you.  I’m not entirely sure if it’s the best one to tell you, but it’s the  first one that comes to mind whenever I think of Halloween or Israel.

It was October 31, 2004 — Halloween — and I found myself in Lud, Israel.  Lud is a terrible, desperate place. I’ve sometimes heard Palestinians from the Gaza Strip refer to it as “hell.” There are sections of the city where the houses are constructed of stapled aluminum siding and dried mud. The more civilized sections are fortresses. Most of the residents live in giant concrete blocks. The city elite (cops, politicians, and drug dealers) live in walled mansions. Lud’s dealers pioneered “ATM drugs”: the junkie walks up to a tiny slit in the wall of his or her dealer’s mansion, deposits some shekels, and out pops their heroin.

I had just returned from the north, visiting Nazareth, Akka, and Haifa, and other places.  I saw the minarets of Qalqiyah and Tulkarem peeking out over the top edge of the notorious Separation Wall and tendrils of black smoke from burning tires licking the blue sky.  I visited a small village called Kufr Manda, a poor farming community of Palestinians that had lost two of their sons in protests and whose hearts I would later break.  And I drank coffee with Bedouins — it had been brewed for three days and had the sharp texture of fine red wine.

On the return journey by train I was aiming for Ramle, near Lud, but overshot and ended up in Beer Sheva, deep in the south.  Israel’s a small country; such things can happen.  Several hours later, deep into the night and even deeper in the Negev desert, I sat with two security guards in the railway terminal of Beer Sheva. One guard was a newly immigrated Russian; the other, a second-generation Sepharadi. They had just finished their mandatory military service. They both served in Gaza, protecting the Israeli settlements there.

“I once saw a terrorist with a rocket,” the Russian said. “I shot him.”

“I ran over an Arab with my tank,” the Sepharadi said. “I don’t know if he was a terrorist.”

They both grinned with a savage joy. The Russian was twenty-four; the Sepharadi, twenty-one.

Do not fear the chiaroscuro

Moses said to his servant, ‘I will journey on until I reach the land where the two seas meet, though I may march for ages’

- Qur’an 18:60

We are all in the chiaroscuro, questing between the dark and the light, not so that we can embrace the one or the other, but to find our true selves, whatever or whoever that may be, at the vertical horizon between the two.

Schwartz’s law

For those of you unfamiliar with Murphy’s law, this is a fundamental premise to the cosmos-is-absurd perspective on life: whatever can go wrong shall go wrong.

Well, I have my own version: if there is an impossibly difficult way of doing something, Christopher Schwartz will find it.

Tonight is a good night to be a Philadelphian

Think about it: a generation has passed since 1983 and Philadelphia’s last major championship.  But more important than the championship are Philadelphians themselves.

One thing I really love about this city is the camaraderie of its citizens.  A friend and I trekked to City Hall, across South Street, and down Passyunk Avenue, and everywhere we went I was struck by how in this moment, every Philadelphian, regardless of race and religion, were hugging each other, cheering, all equally on the edge of tears.  Brotherhood – that’s what this city’s about.

R.I.P. Mr. Grady: interview, “The Scope and Nature of University Education”

It is with a bemused pen that I report the passing of John Grady, the director of La Salle University’s Honors Program. Rightfully considered a pioneer of honors programs among small liberal arts colleges, for 34 years Mr. Grady was a major influence on the careers and lives of hundreds of La Salle graduates — myself (proudly) included. As with the passing of Dr. Michael Kerlin, a professor whom I deeply loved, Mr. Grady’s abscence will take some time to fathom.

Other weblogs covering Mr. Grady’s passing:

• Chevron Says… (and a memorial, “The Devout Educator,” available here)
  
• Perpetual Priest
• The Expatriate

Protected: Letter to an old love who won’t speak with me anymore

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password: