The Whirlwind Review

The Whirlwind Review
Issue 1

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Gary D. Swaim

Apologia

Prelude

No pretenses. No veil draping my face
to separate me from you, you from me.
Each word spoken, seen or heard by you,
will be more than merely a word. It will be
the stumbling of my Self, trying to weave
threads, strand by strand, word by word,
into the fabric of whole cloth, a shawl
worthy to be worn about the shoulders
of any who might need warmth. No pretenses,
only bumbling efforts to braid difficult syllables
together, for your understanding and mine.

Of God

I feel the fool speaking of God, and yet,
I breathe this one I’ve learned to call God,
every day. You see, I am a Job and a Thomas,
a Peter and a Paul. I am, no doubt, a doubter, and I am doubtless a
believer. I find myself lying in the philosophical
bed next to Kierkegaard, and as I toss about sleeplessly,
I hear him saying out of his depth of sleep, “It’s foolish
to speak of God. No one can speak of the Wholly Other.”
And, yet, he continues through the night, talking
of this God, using the only thoughts available to him—human
thoughts, struggling to place arms around a being
untouched, untouchable, yet whom he loves.
In the darkness of his sleep, he both lifts his arms to the sky
where he thinks his God must reside, and laughs aloud at his
foolishness for the gesture. I am Job. I am Thomas.
I am Peter. I am Paul.

I don’t think I can speak of God knowingly. I do not know
God’s gender or if there is such a thing as gender in the place of
God. I don’t know God’s latitude or longitude
or if my God is a spatial being. I’m sailing a sea, expecting
to fall from the earth’s surface when I reach the horizon. I’m lost.
I can not speak of God knowingly.
The shawl I weave as I sail unravels. And, so, I speak
of the Wholly Other in faith, assigning to God’s being—Love,
Mercy, and Justice, attributes I want my God
to have in a world too often filled with Hate, Reprisal
and Injustice. I can not speak of God knowingly, but I can and do
believe.

Of Jesus

As I quietly begin reweaving my shawl, I see Jesus. It is He who
offers me calmness and increased understanding, as
should be so. The weaving, after all, takes a more substantive
shape, one I begin to recognize. It has the face of a child which
grows into the face of a man, a complexion most unlike my own,
and it (he?) speaks a language I cannot comprehend. Yet, I
understand, and though I have only suggestive evidence of his
walking this earth, I believe—even as I believe in a Sophocles
I have never seen.

Of the numerous stories I know, it is the stories of Jesus
touching the lives of those surrounding him, touching those
whom no one else dared touch, those at the very edges of both life
and death—it is these stories that have caused me
to be whoever I am. It is in the Garden of Gethsemane
that he takes my unfinished shawl from my hands
and places it around his shoulders, telling me, in his own
moment of sorrow that it is enough that I believe.
And as he returns to his disciples, I see him in the dark
of night remove the shawl and place it over a shivering, fast-asleep
Peter who would later deny Him. Jesus knew. I believe.

Of the Spirit (spiritus}

I begin a weaving again, this time for the sail on my little
craft. It has navigated about this world for 72 years now
and has grown old and thin, not unlike myself. As I weave
each strand, one into or through the other, each seems to go its own
uncharted way rather than the way I might have
it go, as do my words when I speak of spiritus.

I am told that to name Spirit is to name the breath of God.
And now, I must capture, with aimless words, the masked
breath of a formless God. I continue weaving but tire,
as I know no words and stop my weaving. Perhaps something to
eat. I’ll try again soon.

The day is extraordinary. Large and small billowy clouds
shape themselves into bananas and fish and monsters as
my little skiff of a ship rides low in the waters. No wind
blows, and my old sail flags itself in weariness about its diminutive
mast. I will eat and rest and will not worry about the horizon, still
in the distance. I will not worry today. The horizon will be there
tomorrow.

My craft is motionless in the waters except for the lightest swells
that push and pull me into sleep gently. I dream
of the horizon. The sun is setting, and my matted eyes
cannot entertain its beauty or horror. What is just beyond
the horizon? As my dream asks the question, I awaken,
startled by a grand breath of fresh air, shaping my sail
into the fullness of a sail made for an enormous frigate.
The sail seems young again, almost newborn, and the wind
I cannot see pushes me away from the horizon, if only for
moments. I do not see spiritus. I feel a breath on my shoulder I
do not understand, pushing me toward the safety
of the shore. I believe.

Of the Scriptures

It’s under the slightest of lights, candles I’m almost sure, that I see
a group of men (and women, too, but I’ll not say so if you won’t)
writing with rapidly flourishing quills. They see what they write as
through some glass darkly. Their hurried writing attests to the fires
in their grain-filled bellies. “Write about Moses and the mountain”
one almost shouts. “No, tell about how he separated the waters,”
another says. “Jaweh separated the waters,” a woman says. And
they write into the depths of the night. Each writes from his or her
own perspective, and on occasion, I think a breeze brushes over
their shoulders.

I’m reminded of the breath of wind that filled the sail
of my little ship and am made to think it is spiritus
calling on them this night. Name it as you wish: God’s
breath, the night-sharpened mind of a man or woman
writing a story of what is loved, stories remembered and held close
to the breast for the memory of a nation.

The words come from a specific time and place and throw
only shadows against darkened glass, unable to seize, in spite of all
the love and passion with which they are written, God, Jesus, the
Spirit, or humankind. Words cannot capture the ephemeral. All is
interpretation, even when loving and so wonderfully profound.

I hold in my library some twelve or fourteen Bibles, multiples of
concordances on the Bible, books written from literary
perspectives (novels, plays, and poetry) filled with allusions to the
Bible. So much of my own writing, both serious and comic, takes
its seeds from the Bible. Scripture (both Hebrew and Christian)
feed the fire in my belly with questions to pursue and answers to
embody.

Of the Church

As I sail rough seas, I find I am weeping, not from fear
but from bitter disappointment. I have allowed my mind’s
eye to drift over heaving waves to distant lands I have never
known (there is so much I do not and can not know). My
thoughts have traveled, as well, to the land from which I’ve
sailed, my own home. In all these lands I see rifts deeper than the
deepest swells in the sea that tosses me about. I cry out for
smoothness of waters as I plead for peace among those who would
worship their God.

I am not at all certain that Jesus sought to establish a church, not a
church, surely, as we know it. The Kingdom of His life and love
was to be in the hearts of individuals. I put away my weaving for
now, as my old sail no longer requires replacement. It has life, the
life that Jesus wanted for His followers, each stepping alongside
Him and toward Jaweh with the surest steps possible. It is enough,
and each person is God’s church, ekklesia, called out for service to
the world.

As I think about taking up my weaving again, I contemplate
the possibility of only one person on this earth, serving (or trying
to serve) God and Jaweh’s saying, “It is enough. You are my
church. We need no candles or choirs. We need only you and me
in quiet union.

Then, I think of the many who light candles across the world and
sing Handel’s The Hallelujah Chorus or lift unknowing but
believing prayers above the dark clouds that now throw shadows
over the tiny speck of my helpless skiff, and my soul rises. Yes,
my soul that I cannot see, but that I believe drives my Being. I
take time to pray with thanks for the church and start weaving once
again, hoping for a completed fabric that, with color and form, will
give unity to the church across all the lands I have seen, great
distances from where I now sail and in my own loved
land.

Of a Sense of Pesonal Call

I believe I have been called to sail the waters of our world in trying
times. To explore, to question, to bring newness to those who are
about me (with the limited abilities I might possess). To seek
healing where there is pain. To be present in all of life.

I can not know specifically what God would have me do or be, so I
must be open to possibilities, even as I must be true with those
whom I encounter. I must understand also that all these things I
seek to be might not be found, that I will know my own short falls.
Jaweh’s net is wide and strong. I must sail the seas, oblivious to
the dangers of the horizon, oblivious to mystery. Oblivious, as Job
knew so well, that we can not know, but we can believe.