You’re reading Tethered Letters, a monthly long-form letter on creative faith and faithful creativity. Everything I write is AI-free. Thanks for reading.
Hello loved ones,
July was quite something, I'm just not sure what thing it was. We encountered it in the context of an extended (and wonderful!) visit with family from Florida, the launch of Percy's soccer career with a local team, and many a longing look over to our rangy, overflowing garden. We've only now been able to dig into it, sorting out the past-due cucumbers and zucchini from the salvageable, hopelessly attempting to tie up the tilting tomato plants so they don't fully suffocate our beans...
It feels more like a metaphor for our cumulative July than I want it to be, but there it is: overwhelming and full, and we're trying to make pickles and zucchini bread from the results.
The joy of the moment is actually our wildflower meadow, which is all over blooms right now. The bergamot has exploded in fireworks. The coneflowers are elegantly drooping their yellow and purple petals back from their seedheads, which the goldfinches are more than happy to gobble up. The ironweed is clawing its way up through the mass of yellow and purple. The rattlesnake master has straightened its back and split out spiky rounds in a dozen places.
The flowers still bloom, even while the nations rage.
I realized the other day that I've been blogging (more on than off) since the early 2000s. I've done so on Xanga, Blogspot, Wordpress, and now Substack, not including the short-form web-logging of my life via social media.
That's around twenty years of sharing my thoughts and feelings online, free for anybody to read. If you know where to look, I'm an open book. You can trace my faith journey, the shaping of my current political views, the growth of my family, and if you read my poetry, the bent of my soul. If you cared to, of course.
My parents celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, and you will not find those 50 years anywhere on the internet for your reading pleasure. You won't read a biography of my mom or dad (although I'm still plotting a kid's novel featuring my dad's escapades as a boy). They have no such channel of gut-spilling available to them as we do now, as we did even growing up in the blogging sphere, and they didn't need it.
We kids will remember the way my dad would goof off at the dinner table, making jokes and telling stories just for the sake of getting my mom to laugh until she cried. We'll remember Mom dancing around the room to “Old Time Rock and Roll.” We'll remember walking along the beach at Thunder Bay skipping shale, then heading back for a campfire. We'll forget so many things our parents did but remember the gist of them: that they loved us and did their best. We'll remember what the love feels like.
But I, on the other hand, have been chronicling my life and thoughts for an online world free of charge since I was 13. I am everywhere, findable in any country, readable on any screen. When I think about it this way, sometimes I feel fractured and afraid, as though my soul has been captured in some way by my words, bound in a server-asylum somewhere for the viewing pleasure of passing spectators. But I also feel something else: as though I matter, as though I've made some small mark on the vast and faulty discourse of my planet.
There is a deep part of each of us that dreads being forgotten and that longs to be seen. And if we are living lives of quiet desperation in isolated worlds where our “best friends” are people we only interact with on the internet, perhaps the discipline of writing — of understanding and presenting our life as one of adventure and meaning — is one way we cope. Perhaps inviting scrutiny into our life decisions is one of the few paths our modern eyes can see to belonging.
That word — “scrutiny” — has been revolving around my head throughout the month. It literally means “sorting through rubbish,” which aligns it perhaps with such exercises as discernment and/or sifting through the news cycle as it comes out. I'm exhausted by engaging in scrutiny myself, but when it's turned back upon me I have a complex relationship with it.
On one hand, none of us want the sort of scrutiny that just looks for all the flaws in order to condemn them. We've all got them, and we've all been under the glass before and know how awful it is.
But on the other hand, no scrutiny might be worse. Under the microscope, at least someone's looking at us with interest, even if it isn't the gracious sort of interest. It's immeasurably worse if no one even cares enough to look at all. A quest for scrutiny is a quest for belonging. Which is the quest, ultimately, for love.
So maybe if we can't find any sort of “seen-ness” in our lives, we post ourselves up online, inside and out, in order to garner views and likes. Maybe we locate an echo chamber and join the only crew who will agree with us. Maybe our desire for people to see us, coupled with filling that desire through plastic, faux-relationships, drives us to greater extremes to be seen.
I wonder about Thomas, for instance, the young, depressive loner who shot at Donald Trump, killed Corey Comperatore, and wounded two others. I wonder if what he wanted was to be seen in a world where he thought no one knew or valued him (whether that was true or not). I wonder if all he wanted was to feel significant.
Not in any world are Thomas’s actions justifiable in the least. There's a chasm between seeing someone as a hurting human being and justifying the evil they do. But also, he was someone's son. I can't fathom what his parents are going through, just as I can't fathom what Corey’s family is experiencing, just as I will never understand the horror of October 7th for the Israeli people, or what the Palestinian people have been experiencing during the war. Is there not room in our hearts to grieve for all of them?
I think I get most angry at the folks who draw lines around which people deserve our grief, and who cherry-pick passages from the Bible to justify violence. Weaponizing the Word of God like this is not without consequence.
The desire to be seen, to belong in this world, unites us even as it divides us in our pursuit of it. If it was part of Thomas’s motivation, it was harbored and honed to the warped point of utter despair, to the point that the only option he saw was violence. If notoriety was why he did it, than he has at least that much in common with the young men who have been mocking him and celebrating his death over the last several weeks. He has something in common with those using his actions as justification for theirs, or with those who said they wished he hadn't missed. He has something in common with you and me.
It’s striking, although not surprising, that immediately following the assassination attempt there was an obsession with Thomas’s politics. There were conspiracy theories from either side on how “they” were responsible. The default assumption for so much of our interaction along political lines is that humans have been so consumed by ideology that they are no longer living, breathing people but automatons directed by mass media, incel message boards, woke agendas, or the dictates of some messianic figure.
What we forget is that humans, by nature, are usually motivated by something other than ideology. While it may be true that facts don't care about your feelings, it is also true that people's feelings don't care about the facts.
Short of outside intervention, we will just go out and do whatever we want to do, even when we know the facts suggest it's a terrible idea. I will ultimately choose the thing that I want most, even if it means submitting other lesser desires to that thing.
For instance, I love my kids and want them to live healthy and happy lives, so I regularly sacrifice my own desires for their sake. Also for instance, if given the opportunity, I will definitely gorge myself on fried cheese curds and beer while vegging out in front of the TV, despite the facts I know about how unhealthy this is for me. I'll even use facts (or make them up) to make me feel better about doing stuff like this. My favorite currently is that stress/heart problems are actually the leading cause of death in men, and having a snack and a sit of an evening reduces my stress levels. Good, right?
Or think about it in terms of writing this letter. I write here on Substack for a variety of reasons, all of them having to do with something I want. On the morally good side of the desire equation is the hope that I would encourage some of you to keep going, that I would point you to hope and purpose in Christ. I also want to tell the truth as clearly as I can, and I want to grow as a writer.
On the more shoddy side of my desires, I want to be looked at. I want to raise my social capital in your eyes, to be viewed as wise and good and honest, even when I'm a much more mixed bag than any of those things. I want to prove myself righteous, somehow, by my inner ideals, even when I can't seem to make my outer actions line up with them. I can be that guy here on the internet more easily, because most of you don't see me in real life.
These desires can be honed and nurtured through habits, or they can be redirected or reversed through external intervention. The love I have for the Lord, for example, is not something I could habituate and it does not come naturally. It's in me only by grace and through the blood of Jesus.
But the fact that personal feelings (or affections) guide human behavior has been extremely helpful for me in understanding not only my own heart, but the hearts of people I have trouble understanding. There are motivations within them I cannot see. They want things I can understand wanting as a fellow person, even if they also want things that are downright evil.
In seeking to see others as humans like us instead of avatars of ideology, we are reflecting and nurturing the love of God in us. This is what Christ did when He took on flesh. He is love in action — Love Incarnate — and He will cut through the ideology crap and get at the heart of the hurting person in front of you if you let Him in.
Here's a truth that wrecks every idle word: God sees you. Do we really understand the transformation this truth could ignite in us?
O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. (Psalm 139:1-4)
If anyone is in the business of scrutinizing — of seeing — it is God Himself. Hebrews 4:13 says that “no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” Proverbs 16:2 says that even when we think we see our ways clearly enough to deem them pure, we’re not seeing deeply enough to know. “... but the Lord weighs the spirit.” Even our motivating desires are laid bare before God: the good, the bad, the ugly.
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you. (vs. 7-12)
And yet, what an incredible thing that the God Who sees us is also the God Who loves us! He who discerns our deepest darkness, our errant thoughts and wayward intentions, and harbors affection for us that goes deeper still.
The truth of God's scrutiny is both unnerving (because of what I know He sees within me) and incredibly comforting (because in spite of it He still loves and preserves me). And the difference between faltering under the fearful weight of His righteous scrutiny and living in the freedom that comes from being seen is the blood of Christ. The former life is spent cringing under the shadow of judgment, the latter is lived cruciform — in the shape and shadow of the Cross, where He took my judgment upon Himself.
Notably, the starkness of His scrutiny in Hebrews 4:13 leads through Christ (v. 14) to the beauty of sympathy in verses 15-16:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
God sees it all. He sees you. He sees the fears and anger you carry. He sees the way the world is running right now, and exactly how it impacts you and those you love. He sees the deepest desires of your heart, and He knows what you need. No matter where things turn this year, or next, or ten years from now, He is still there, at work in a million ways. He can even guide your heart to love your enemies.
Because being laid bare before a loving God doesn't just have the unsettling effect of confronting you with your own sinfulness. It has the even more unsettling effect of teaching you to love other enemies of God, to desire that they turn to receive His love, and to grieve when they don't.
The only path forward is that old rock and roll called grace, which really does soothe the soul. May you and I be harbingers of it.
July Favorites
The Immeasurable World by William Atkins was a fascinating read, and for those of you interested in both travelogue style writing and humanity’s complex relationship with desert places around the world, I highly recommend it.
My favorite of Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry collections were Red Suitcase, You and Yours, and Transfer. My favorite anthology from her was This Same Sky.
Ecclesiastes, again. “Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore fear God.” (5:7)
Watched Inside Out with the kiddos, which never fails to make me cry.
While my brother and sister-in-law were in town (both educators), we watched a bunch of Abbott Elementary episodes, and they were funnier than ever just knowing how accurate they were to the teacher life.
“ I think I get most angry at the folks who draw lines around which people deserve our grief, and who cherry-pick passages from the Bible to justify violence.” Thank you for calling out the obligation to care for everyone, not just our favorites. We want to be tribal, but God sees us all as family. To be candid, this is at times extremely difficult to embrace, as compassion compels us to forgive, and forgiveness is a mountain wrapped in storms.
Amen. This post really spoke to me...I couldn't even tell you why specifically, which is strange for me, but it was like drinking a cup of encouragement and truth when you didn't realize you were thirsty for it.