Pannikin' - Physical Expressions of More Significant Things...

NOTE: If you take note of the intentional use of indentation / formatting, it should make your experience of this scribbling much easier to organize intellectually (even though it was written in a single stream of consciousness)

So I’m driving down the PCH today, partially because my laptop was so dead Google maps wouldn’t display, and partially because someone once told me how enjoyable it was to do so. And I’ve got this concept running through my head… all of a sudden I see this place on the side of the road. My friend bought me a shirt from this place 4 years ago or so, and I still have it and its one of my softest t-shirts (but still thick – you know the kind I’m talking about). I turn in and begin marveling at this place, walking around it with astonishment. Pannikin’ is doubtless one of the coolest coffee shops I’ve ever seen. And it reminds me of this old friend of mine to a T! AMAZING coffee with a ting of spice in the drinks, chairs on the lawn, a cute little catch phrase written outside on a signboard, scarves and books and all kinds of crazy coffee connoisseur gadgets rounding the walls. The place smells of gourmet liquid energy! No place, I think, has ever captured her essence (as I remember it from way back when) more…

So that concept I was pondering dangerously while NOT focusing on the road? Someone asked me what the women are like here in California. My initial response was, “Well, let’s just say I don’t want to be a pastor out here… ‘cus it’d be… distracting, to say the least.” But I’m driving down the road and for some reason I’m finding it quite easy to ignore all of these scantily clad women. I’m being honest here, because I’ve got no one to impress, and if you think I’m some sick pervert then you should look around at the men in your life. Fathers, brothers, sons, boyfriends, friends, etc. We are all distracted by skin. It’s the nature of who we are, at least on a very basic level. But for some reason, ESPECIALLY today, its not a distraction at all. And I started to wonder why.

I just returned from 6 days on leave back in Texas, and I showed up back out in California with a bit of anxiety and some frustration to match. But last night I was blessed to enjoy the company of some other believers from around her. What’s the connection? I’ve recently RE-encountered the women in my life to who mean a great deal to me.

They don’t carry such weight in my heart, they don’t play such important roles in my life because they look good in bathing suits. Don’t get me wrong, some of my dearest friends happen to be some very attractive young women, but this is merely incidental. Now certainly, you can say I wouldn’t have met them had I thought they were mutants, the bane of society. Whatever. You miss the point.

People asked me how I could be so depressed recently in Southern California (SoCal). “It’s so gorgeous out there… and the beach, the architecture, the cars (someone knows me well)… depression doesn’t make any sense.” And the beaches in Texas? NOTHING compared to the coastline out here. Why then do I delight in the thought of TX, and so often dread my time in California?

**It is not the physical world in which I was designed to delight. I was driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, enjoying the amazing breeze, watching the waves crash in on themselves (and on the surfers), smelling the strong, salty, ocean air, and experiencing the sun’s warmth upon my face… and all I could think about was how much I love my home. See, I can’t relate to the mountains, and I can’t share my heart with the sea in any meaningful way which would solicit a legitimate response. I can’t hear the sufferings of the breeze or comfort the tide when it is at it’s lowest. I was created for - I was designed for relationships with the people God has given me in my life. The stars will never feel the joy of salvation, and I won’t ever see them baptized into my kinship like blood never can be. These things are simply material – monistic expressions of reality which pale in comparison to the complexity of the human body, which itself only reflects the complexity of the soul like a piano reflects an entire orchestral symphony after it has been transposed to the eighty-eight keys available (C. S. Lewis’ Transposition, is largely responsible for this insight).

It is not the female body in which I delight. It is the feminine persona, intricately and delicately knit by God, in part to show me a facet of Himself which my testosterone clouded mind could never grasp without those lovely women in my life. (And hopefully they also learn something of His character from me, but such confessions of my shortcomings shan’t be scribed here today.)

I needn’t ogle at the body of a woman in a bathing suit, because that isn’t the aspect of my eventual but as yet undiscovered wife which will bring joy and divine instruction to my heart. My friends aren’t my friends because they look good. My friends are my friends, my sisters my sisters and my brothers my brothers, because they love me and care for me and we RELATE to one another. When a brother encourages me while I struggle through temptation in VA; when a girl decides to wear something more modest; when they pray for me, and they comfort me, and they think of me, and they text or call or Facebook me for no apparent reason. These are the times in which they FAR surpass the physical realm of in which we relate (and it is also why our degree of proximity does not necessarily reflect our degree of intimacy – read my description of Asa I’s friendship from my last post for clarification and exemplification on this).

And in this specific example, my purity is aided by my love for the Ladies in my life because knowing them makes me a better person, a better man, a better father and husband one day, and a better disciple of The Cross of Christ. Because when a women allows, and sometimes FORCES the men in her life to see her for all that she is, בת המל אלין, bat-hamelek elyon, a daughter of The King Most High, she reduces my heart’s ability and reprobate inclination to objectify her as anything less. Women, strive to be that Princess. Men, strive to settle for nothing less!!! (Aside: “Charm [Favor before men] is deceptive and beauty [via adornments] is vain” – meaning simply that these are not bad in themselves, but abhorrent if they are a woman’s ONLY claim to True Beauty. Don’t worry, a commentary explaining this is in the works!)

This place, this coffee shop. It isn’t amazing because it itself has some intrinsic quality which causes its patrons to experience joy and intimacy and laughter. It is great to me because it reminds me of a very old and very dear friend with whom I no longer talk. And I would venture to say the same is probably largely true of many or most of the others here. They undoubtedly are here secondarily for the caffeinated goodness, and primarily for the company they are in. Whether it be a group of friends at the table, a girl they fancy next to them, whatever. And some are, like me, alone. They read books or ponder quietly or pour over laptops (just as I am doing) or legal pads or journals. And certainly there are some exceptions here today… but what is a journal or a personal quiet pondering if not introspection: a conversation with and an investigation into one’s own self. And what is a book if not a diatribe with the far off or else corporeally passed author, a sharing via letters instead of sounds, scripts instead of a spoken tongue.