It seems fitting that the first story I’ll post is the one that made me realize I could write. In eighth grade, when I was fourteen, I’d been re-watching the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War. The episode was on the Battle of Fredericksburg. When it finished, I sat in the growing darkness of my bedroom, heart heavy, eyes wet.

What sort of world do we live in? I ask this question often when it comes to studying war.

Most of the time, writing is a discipline. A slogging, dreary process that requires hours of effort to read through and edit. Sometimes, however, when your heart is as full as mine was that night, the words come effortlessly. Flowing together from your head and heart onto the page, conveying all the emotion, images, and thoughts in your head. So it was with Memories.

(Warning: Contains depictions of war- related violence.)

Memories

I am an old man now, and have seen a great many things in my time. For there are things that even an old man’s mind can’t forget. Some of them are beautiful, wonderful things—some are sad, and some are things I wish to God with all my heart I could forget. I have written here of one of the most terrible things that can ever happen–not because I wish to burden others with these memories, or because I believe I can lighten my own burden by sharing them–but because I hope that people will remember what has happened, and hopefully be able to prevent, on some scale, the things like this that will happen in the future…

Fredericksburg. Even now, anyone who lived during that terrible war (or has heard of that battle) still shudders with loathing and horror and lifts up their hands in prayer to beg God to spare them from such a world as this. I was fourteen years old in December of 1862, and on a quest to “prove my manhood” (and search for glory and riches). Running away from my parents and younger sisters to join “Old Abe’s Army” was, to me, the best way of finding all three. Legally, you had to be eighteen to enlist. Morally, the generals couldn’t care less. And I became a drummer boy in the last war they were used.

It turned out that life as a soldier wasn’t anything like they had advertised in all the posters I had seen. The Grand Army of the Potomac was a miserable bunch of war-weary men kicking their heels on the banks of the Rappahannock and dying of disease. The previous month, General Ambrose Burnside had replaced George McClellan as the head of the Union army, McClellan having fallen out of favor with the president because he never fought and was full of excuses. Burnside therefore decided that he would prove he possessed the skills that McClellan so conspicuously lacked, and he was going to prove it by taking Fredericksburg.

Fredericksburg, an important Confederate city, was located midway between Richmond and Washington. It was thinly defended and would be quite easy to take according to General B.’s plan. We were to cross the river with pontoon bridges and shell the little town. Unfortunately, the bridges arrived seventeen days after they had been sent for, and in those seventeen days General Lee had arrived with an army of 75,000 men. On the eleventh, we crossed the bridge, marching side by side in all our pomp and splendor. Me, proud as a rooster, playing my little drum. The glorious “Rat-a-tat-tat-tat, Rat-a-tat-tat-tat” ringing through the cold December air. It was all too easy. The men shelled and looted the town with little to no resistance from the fiery and ruthless Rebels. “It is almost as if they’re trying to lure us in,” a comrade of mine said, “only to trap and slaughter us like wild animals.” Sure enough, there was hell to pay two days later.

On the thirteenth, Burnside decided to attack. Oh God! What fools were our generals, what fools our poor men! Little did we know that the infamous Stonewall Jackson was on the Rebels’ right flank, and on the left, with four lines of riflemen behind a little wall in defense of Marye’s Heights, was that devil James Longstreet. Lee’s artillery covered every possible approach, and still we charged up that hill. It was suicide. Wave after wave was massacred, melting like snow near that cursed wall. Every crack of a rifle and booming of a cannon made gaps in our ranks that were soon filled up again. Man after man stumbling and slipping on bodies and blood up that hill only to be shot in the head, the stomach, the heart themselves, and join the ever growing pile of the dead and wounded. At Marye’s Heights the Rebels, our brothers and countrymen, forgot for a moment the war and the enemy as cheer after cheer went up among them at the bravery of the men who continued to climb, all the while being mowed down. I say all this as from afar, for how can I describe the feelings of the boy I was, as I watched all this, transfixed, my eyes bulging with terror.

There is a strange music of battle, and I can hear it even now. Cannons become the bass, bellowing out their parts in harmony with the altos, sung by furious rifles. The sopranos are the screams of men, while all the while my drum the steady tenor. Mechanically, I beat that little drum, tapping orders given that few could hear, and living with the knowledge that I would be playing those who did hear to their deaths. I stood there among corpses: headless, armless, blown in half–and among the wounded who lay at the base of the hill, watching them convulse with pain and reach with bloody and shaking hands towards me for help. But I was as helpless as they and could do nothing but play, play, play and wish that it would end.

Our soldiers made fourteen assaults on Marye’s Heights before the generals decided that it could not be taken. We lost 9,000 men just on that hill. But night was coming, and I remember that even better than the battle. We were trapped at the bottom of the hill when the temperature dropped, and men who were bleeding to death now froze to death as well. With the silence of the guns, sounds more terrible even than the song of war were heard. Cries of the wounded echoed eerily in the darkness: some for a drink of water, some screaming for God to have pity, and some for a merciful hand to finish what the enemy had started. Others were delirious, murmuring names of loved ones because the end was very near. Worst of all was the never-ceasing moan of those who would not, or could not express their agony. All the while we wretched few, incapable of helping, sat huddled among corpses, daring not to make a fire and trying to shut out the horrid, horrid screams all around us.

The next day, the Rebels opened fire again. But early in the morning we had made a wall out of the frozen corpses, and spent the day hiding behind that, trying not to hear the bullets as they disfigured what was left of our poor friends. When the second day’s evil work was done, we crawled out from behind our bloody walls and dug shallow graves in the frozen ground, massing those poor fellows in without a way to tell them apart in the dark.

And then there is the part I remember most. Suddenly, the sky was filled with ribbons and ribbons of green lights, dancing above us. They lit up the whole sky, and seemed almost supernatural. Scientists and men with book learning call them the “northern lights,” and the Rebels always said it was God celebrating their victory. But to me, the scared, ignorant boy that I was, it seemed like they were the spirits of the men we were burying, way, way up in heaven, watching over us.

When we had finished with our somber work, I fell asleep. I dreamed that I was flying up, up, up into those dancing green lights and was in heaven. In heaven, I saw all of those who’d died, both North and South, shaking hands and laughing as brothers ought to do. Then I saw the apostles (though I couldn’t see their faces,) who came and gave each of the men a little medal, and the medals turned out to be keys–not the keys to heaven, but the keys to earth–to watch the world from where they were and see the doings of men. I was given one too, and I turned my eyes past Virginia and the army, past rivers and cities and towns to my own village, where I saw my family. Then a great powerful wave of homesickness swept through me, stronger than any I had ever felt before, and I awoke with a little cry to find myself alone in the darkness, all light gone, still among corpses. Everything that had happened in those past two days came upon me all at once, and I wept as I have never wept before. Wept with the pain and horror and misery that only a soldier can know.

Thus ends my story, one of the only that I can clearly remember of those four years so long ago. We lost 12,600 men in that battle, the Rebs lost 5,300, but most of them had just gone home for Christmas. Perhaps I remember it so clearly because of the dream, or the lights in the sky, or all the friendly conversations our soldiers had with the enemy before we crossed the Rappahannock. However, I believe that it is because no braver men on either side of that war have yet to be found than the men who charged Marye’s Heights. And I have never in my life experienced anything so twisted as countrymen cheering for the bravery of their fellow countrymen, while at the same time slaughtering them by the thousands.

What lesson I have endeavored to teach here, you must decide.

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If you’re going to be a strong, independent woman, you’ve got to be able to build furniture.

Even if you don’t want to be completely independent, knowing how to properly read IKEA instructions is a great boost for your self confidence. There should be little badges that say “I deciphered Swedish hieroglyphics!”

Besides, at the end of the day, after you’ve nailed through the wood at the wrong angle, tripped over some screwdrivers, possibly hit your fingers with a hammer, and scrapped the skin off your foot from flipping the shelf over alone; you can console yourself with the fact that, at least you’re building character, if not a sound piece of furniture.

All that to say, this summer I built a bookshelf.

My sister, arriving home from her freshman year of college, told me (fairly might I add) that we still share a bedroom and I’d have to make space for her. While we’ve shared all our lives, I swear we’ve fought more these past few weeks about our room than in the past sixteen years.

(I unceremoniously dumped all her stuff in our closet after she moved out in August, so she definitely had the moral high ground, but that’s beside the point.)

Her re-introduction to her own bedroom that I’d tried and failed to kick her out of was accompanied with a dorm’s worth of decor, and a school year’s worth of books.

This led to a compromise. She’d bring in a dresser that I insisted we didn’t need, and we could buy another bookshelf.

Done and done.

However, building the bookshelf turned out to be the easy part, because after it’s built you have to organize the books.

Not only that, but while you’re organizing them, you have to make sure both six-foot bookshelves don’t get top heavy and fall on you.

And if you’re stubborn (or claiming to be independent) and refuse to let said sister/roommate help you, you’re in for several hours of self-inflicted frustration.

However, as I waded through the sea of books, trying to organize by category (philosophy here, religion there, classics on the other shelf, etc.) I realized that I have not taken advantage of the wealth of knowledge before me.

For example:

The Lord of the Rings?

Never read them.

Agatha Christie?

Nope.

Mary Poppins?

Nah.

This led to a second revelation.

I am, first and foremost, a writer of fiction.

While most of my time is spent working on longer projects, the exercise of writing short stories is as important for a writer as it is for an artist to work in different mediums. They may be better at charcoal sketches, but you can learn a lot from working with oil pastels.

All that to say the remaining few weeks of summer (and is it just me, or has this summer flown by?) will become a summer of stories. Both the ones that I’m reading, and ones that I’ve written. I’m going to try to step out of my comfort zone, maybe write a short mystery, a Gothic tale, a story filled with time travel, and maybe even something contemporary. Who knows?

Not only that, but I’ve compiled a summer reading list and I’m inviting you to join me. Let’s step out of our comfort zones together, whether it’s for one of the books below, or all of them, I’m excited to share this journey (and the discussions) with you!

1. Silence by Shūsaku Endō: A teacher of mine highly recommended this my freshman year. Also, it’s one of the books my sister came home with, so reading it feels like justifying the extra bookshelf.

2. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card: I’m not really a Sci-Fi person, but this is a must read in my family, so I’m willing to give it a shot.

3. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: Just to lighten things up. I feel like I’ve started this one more times than I can count, but I’ve yet to finish it.

4. Remarkably Bright Creatures: This one I’m a little nervous about, having firmly entrenched myself in the classics department since late elementary school. However, I said I was going to try something new, so contemporary fiction here I come!

5. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster: Confession, I have read this before. However, I think I was to young to get everything I should’ve out of it, so I’m giving it another try.

6. A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare: I love anything Shakespeare, and this is one of his that I don’t know as well. If you want an unsolicited advertisement, get the Usborne Complete Shakespeare, that book changed my life and I still use it before reading one of his plays.

7. The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne: I love this bear, but I haven’t read many of the actual stories. It’ll be fun to re-watch the original Disney movie after finishing it!

Fingers crossed I get through them all before the school year begins! Keep me updated on which ones (if any) you choose! I’ll keep y’all updated as I go through them, and post the first short story next week. Let me know how it goes in the comments below.

Best,

R.E.B.

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
                                                                                                                                       -John Steinbeck, East of Eden

I often repeat this quote to myself.

This I believe.

This I would fight for.

This I must fight against.

All that to say, here’s what you should know about my hairstylist.

He has for the last three years been my favorite at the local chain salon I go to. For the entire period I’ve known him (until just this last time), his hair and beard have looked like he didn’t know what a hairbrush was. He smells strongly of cigarettes.

He’s great.

Our conversations our short. However, I find them quite thought provoking. Once, though I don’t remember how it came up, we were discussing Vietnam soldiers and they way they were treated when they came home.

“It doesn’t matter why they went,” he told me, “you always salute the soldier.”

Last week, I was a counselor at a summer camp for the middle school section of my youth group.

It’s a great youth group.

It’s also a place where the national anthem is a running joke.

Somehow, especially in the high school section, we always end up standing on top of tables singing it at full volume—when there is no flag present.

Some—those who start it—do it for attention. Others join in because it’s funny or because everyone else is doing it. Soon the entire room, or house, or wherever we happen to be staying, is full of people shrieking the words “Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave/ o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” Before they burst into rounds of mock applause. This usually happens at least once every day, every year, every high school and middle school trip I’ve been on.

I get it: it’s funny. Super Bowl performances are easy to make fun of, and at this specific camp as they blobbed1 leaders in epic costumes to the most terrible remix I’ve ever heard, I couldn’t help laughing.

But I couldn’t help crying either.

Because since the age of nine I’ve studied the cost of freedom.

Images of amputated limbs—arms, legs, and feet piled together—disturbed me so much that I refused to watch the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War until years later.

But that didn’t stop me from poring over other photographs.

Photographs of people, real people, blown in half with their intestines hanging out from their exposed ribcages. A stray hand lying besides a man’s corpse.

A young man, dried blood covering his face, with a bullet through his head.

Survivors of Andersonville, stick thin. Holocaust thin. At first, when I was ten years old, I thought the soldier in the photo was mummified.

Mass graves. Unidentified bodies lying in rows, survivors crouching over them.

And on, and on, and on.

But it’s the eyes that scare me the most. The eyes of people who have seen war for what it really is.

And as the blobbing continued I couldn’t shake these images in my brain. I saw the faces, and heard the voices of real people describing what it meant to fight and die for freedom.

Soldiers writing of their comrades screaming, burning, slowly dying. Eyeballs dangling from their sockets, sides of their faces blown off. Letters written to wives about their reason for sacrificing it all.

Wives and children you know they never came back to.

The national anthem was written for a reason. Sung for a reason, meant for a reason.

So it’s not funny to me.

Maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe it’s not that big a deal, and I need to calm down and worry about myself.

But as much I’ve tried to convince myself that I’m the only problem, I cannot shake the conviction that this silly little instance represents something more.

How many things do we do, just for fun, or as a joke, that hold deeper moral implications?

I’m not trying to claim the moral high ground here, or say that I am in any way better than the people who sing it. They probably don’t overthink things like I do.

But I know veterans with PTSD, and when I combine my affection for them with the stories and photographs I’ve pored over, I’ve decided that there’s no use in feeling guilty about disagreeing with this.

Maybe the people who start singing haven’t seen Vietnam veterans tear up when you tell them, “Welcome home.” Maybe they haven’t seen the reverence these heroes hold for the anthem they mock.

So I stand, but I don’t sing.

I will let them do it for their own amusement. I won’t judge, or think less of them for it. But I will allow myself the right to think, that for me at least, it’s wrong. I won’t concern myself with whether or not I need to lighten up, I can’t shake seven years’ worth of dead soldiers.

I don’t have to enjoy this specific tradition.

I will let them.

But I can quietly stand my ground.

I think this is something that we’ve lost sight of. Being able to do what we think is right, for us at least, but allowing others to do as they see fit.

You don’t have to shout them down.

But you don’t have to sing either.

Have you ever wondered if all we have is just memories of memories, because every moment of your life except this second, right now, exists only in your mind?

We lose so much of our life after we’ve lived it—because now our life is confined to the past.

And we forget more than we remember…

and we often remember wrong.

And the stage of our life we remember the least is our childhood.

So what part of ourselves do we lose, forget?

The best part? The true part?

It’s funny how little things can trigger vivid memories. Maybe because the little things are the ones we miss the most.

After school let out this year, I got bangs. Something seemingly insignificant, yet not at the same time.

As I told my aunt recently, “I feel like myself again.” And this has called me to remember who I used to be.

Back when adults were just adults instead of messy human beings like I am.

Back when I didn’t realize you inherit your family’s ghosts.

Back when life was just life and meant to be lived to the fullest.

This post is about memories. How we live them, learn from them, and find the courage to make new ones. It is written in the way memories appear to us. Broken, fragmented, and vivid.

I hope at the end of this, you’ll be willing to share some of yours. I would love to hear them.

The change jingled as I set it down on the cool counter of the store. A couple dollars in quarters from customers I’d hustled with card tricks throughout the morning was just enough to buy a Dr. Pepper and a king-sized Twix bar. I’d come there often with money from the same gig as I made around fifty bucks a summer. That card trick sure did come in handy. Of course, it helped that I was young and just cute enough to trick them into betting. I sure made more money that way than when I stayed up past midnight playing poker with my grandpa and sister in Gunnison. Whenever the customers, usually people riding down at the horse barn, but occasionally people staying at the lodge, asked what I was doing up there, I’d respond in an offhand way, concealing the pride I felt, “Oh, I’m the farrier’s daughter.” But sometimes it was more than that: “I’ve been up here every summer of my life, my family’s been shoeing horses here for generations.”

The store was small, and served almost as a portal into the separate parts of the lodge. The kitchen was off to my left. A good, chaotic kitchen with old boxes of cereal, huge refrigerators, lots of pots and pans, and a stovetop shiny with grease. At the far end of the kitchen there was a separate, windowed room with a long wooden table and benches. I’d eaten blueberry pancakes at the staff breakfast there more times than I could count.

At the back of the register was a doorway into the lodge. Crowded and cluttered, it was decorated with taxidermy mounts and handmade furniture. My sister and I had spent hours there on rainy days playing Trivial Pursuit and building puzzles. Laura Dever, one of the sisters whose grandfather built the place, was usually around the lodge. She was the one who’d make us pancakes, and she’d give us stuff out of the store for free. Once, she regaled me with stories about how the meat from each and every one of the animals with the taxidermied heads tasted.

I liked Laura. She had a parrot named Scarlett that she’d bring out and show us in the evenings if we walked by her cabin. When the bird died, she kept it in a box. We’d sit on the lodge porch with her as she fed peanuts to the ground squirrels and chipmunks, telling stories. One year, a marmot who she called Bubba would wind his way up from the rec hall and old playground set at the same time every evening for his supper.

The last time I was at Meeker Park, until yesterday, was for her memorial.

In addition to the lodge, there were over twenty log cabins, which were built in the 1920’s. They were always fun to stay in when we weren’t just up for the day, but my favorite place was the barn.

That’s where the people were. Riders, wranglers, and family. My dad and grandpa would shoe the horses. Patty, Laura’s sister, was a sassy old lady who ran the place.

My shoes were always muddy from running wild in the horse pasture with my cousins and siblings. We made houses in the trees, fished and waded in the Lily Pond, and ran down old piles of horse manure. We’d cross the pasture to the neighboring stable, Lane’s, where after a hard day’s work, all the adults would walk or drive to sit on the porch and have a beer. Wherever we went, the ringing sound of my dad’s hammer could be heard. The horses were always stamping, snorting, and whinnying for each other across the pasture. We’d step out of the way for the trail rides coming in or out, usually down from Deer Ridge, waving to the guides because we had the privilege of knowing them.

At the barn, we’d make mud pies, and climb in the back of old horse trailers and pickup trucks. I’d read for hours, blow bubbles, and pull nails out of shoes for my dad and grandpa when I wanted to make a little more money. Everyone was always telling stories, grinning, laughing. Time moved slower then.

The air was fresh and filled with scents. Clover and pine trees, horses and wood. The sun was always shining until the daily afternoon rain, and then the ground was wet and everything sparkled.

We’d have picnics of fried chicken and Nilla Wafers by the Lily Pond. My older sister, younger brother, two cousins, and I would sometimes get iced tea from the barn’s fridge. Patty always had mints and lemon drops. Once, she drove my sister and me around on a golf cart and we picked baskets of wild raspberries until our hands were pink and mouths were sticky.

When my dad was done shoeing, he’d take us riding. Sometimes just through the pasture, sometimes up to the top of Deer Ridge. In the evenings we’d fly kites, make s’mores in the old stone fireplaces, and laugh as we kids tried to tell scary stories.

It lasted until I was twelve.

And then the lodge was sold.

And people passed away.

And I grew out my bangs, and chopped off my hair, and forgot that part of myself.

There are things that make us who we are.

I was a skinny kid with bangs and muddy tennis shoes

I was the girl with hair past her waist. (And I was a little too vain about it.)

I was the farrier’s daughter.

I was a dancer.

A dreamer.

A storyteller.

Grief does strange things, and as you grow up, there are so many things to grieve. Innocence, people, freedom.

When life got hard, I pulled away until I could no longer come back. It was like watching through someone else’s eyes as they went through the motions.

I let people I was close to become strangers, and I never gave strangers the chance to be anything else.

When I was younger, I held to the fact that you’ve never really lived unless you’ve flown across mountain roads in an old stick shift truck, blasting 90’s country (specifically Alabama) on CDs with your head out the window. Eyes streaming and hair flying from the wind in your face.

And recently I realized, I want to live again.

Yesterday, I went back for the first time since I was fourteen. But this time, I was the one who drove.

Yesterday I walked the places I once knew like the back of my hand. It was a ghost town. As I walked, I realized you have two choices.

You can be overwhelmed by the weight of old memories and ghosts of what used to be. You can be so afraid by the pain of change, that you never move forward.

Or, you can go and make new memories.

So that’s exactly what I did.

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My country, ‘tis of Thee,
Sweet Land of Liberty
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountain side
Let Freedom ring.

The City of Brotherly Love

Last week I spent four days in Philadelphia (hence the late post) enjoying the benefits of 95 degree weather plus humidity. And it’s only May!

While in the City of Brotherly Love I…

1. Tried to convince my mom to go to Gettysburg (it’s only two(ish) hours away!).

2. Listened as my sister tried to get us to drive to New York City (which is around the same distance in the opposite direction).

3. Did neither. However, my sister would’ve won.

4. Went sightseeing around the city’s historic district.

5. Ate a lot of really good food.

   And…

6. Attended a graduation (which was the whole reason for being there).

The only other time I’ve visited landmarks of significance in American history was an eighth grade trip to D.C. While one of my favorite experiences of all time, I was in the process of a semester long research paper and presentation on sweatshops, so my head was stuffed with horror stories as I browsed the gift shops in America’s most important sites and LITERALLY EVERYTHING WAS MADE IN CHINA!!!

Normal, everyday items made in the conditions I researched are hard enough to buy, but copies of the Declaration of Independence, t-shirts that say “freedom forever,” and pictures of our most important landmarks sold at the Library of Congress, National Archives, and the Capital Building sickened me.

Regardless of America’s relationship with China, I think producing patriotic swag in a way that (in my eyes)1 is essentially slave labor contradicts everything America stands for.

Even as I write that sentence, however, I realize just how tired I am of people tearing America down.

My post is a little longer today, but bear with me. These are thoughts I’ve wrestled with for a long time.

Separate Events, One Impression

Are we living out the fall of Rome?

I have heard this question, spoken with irony, many times before. It gives me the same sickening swoop in my stomach that I’ve had since Covid every time someone says “When China, or Russia, or AI takes us over.”

It’s like a Rockies game. Like we know we’re going to lose eventually so we’ll just give up now.

As I said before, the reason I was in Pennsylvania was for a graduation ceremony. The college president (who also happened to be a father in the Catholic Church) gave a commencement speech where the entire theme was “make them hear you.” As I sat in the stands, listening to the words this man passed on to students receiving their master’s and doctorates, I couldn’t help but think “does every voice need to be heard?”.

If we do not have a common cause to unite us, every voice dissolves into chaos, and mob rule begins.

The president claimed the common goal was freedom.

But what does it mean to be free?2

Independently of that, I saw the Liberty Bell and walked the outskirts of Independence Hall. The bell rang as the Declaration, signed in that building, was first read aloud throughout the city. The Constitution, as well as the decision to separate from Great Britain, were both debated there. Here was America’s first capital. Here America was born.

And I know this country, my country, has changed the world.

The Liberty Bell, dubbed so by abolitionists in the 1830s, has inspired leaders from around the globe. Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have all visited it.

But the bell means more than the sound of freedom. Abraham Lincoln, on the eve of his inauguration and the outbreak of Civil War, standing near the spot I stood, pondered the words “all men are created equal” and said:

“It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.”

Yes and Amen.

But you’ve turned on the news.

Regardless of religious or political lines, we know (or think we know) that Lincoln’s ideal is not within our grasp, nor was it in his. Four years of bloody war followed. One that killed more of our countrymen than any other, and even more than many of our wars combined.

Here’s “the Rub”

I believe wholeheartedly in the concept of a fallen creation and original sin. I’m not sure I could understand humanity otherwise. However, this belief combined with my deep seated pessimism gives me very little faith in humanity’s ability to ever change. And if we cannot change, then we can never truly make a difference, so there’s no point in really trying.

Once again, it’s like watching a Rockies game.

As I walked past sights practically “hallowed” in their significance, I felt doubt and even sadness.

For as strongly as I disagree with communism, I finally understand its appeal. Driving through a big city heightened differences I have not seen in Denver. Crazy opulence on one street and destitution on the next.

And almost every patriotic item I’ve come across, for our 250th anniversary, or in the silly gift shops, was made in China.

And as I listened to the speech the president gave, feelings became intermingled with the pride I had for the graduate. Exhaustion? Anger? Scorn?

I’m so very tired of being told to make people hear me. To challenge the Status Quo. To eff the patriarchy. To burn it all down.

“This does not fix the problem!” I want to scream. “We are adding to the chaos, and the anger, and the hate!”

The simple fact is, if no one can agree, no one will be heard.

It wasn’t only this message that disheartened me. It was the fact that I don’t think he believed what he was saying himself. The sentiment behind his inspiring words are such a cliche that I’m not sure anyone believes them.

Or if they do, the change tends to push us in the wrong direction.

Freedom’s Bell is Broken

All that to say, I know it can be disheartening. We live in a society swift to condemn every one of our nation’s flaws. One that delights in every negative aspect of our government. One that bullies us in a cycle of our perceived guilt which they demand we’ve inherited no matter how unjust it is. Worst of all, however, is that no matter how much I’d like to disagree with them, I can’t help seeing what they see.

Freedom’s bell is broken, yes, but it has always been.

We are holders of a broken liberty. Stewards of an imperfect government. And members of a broken race.

In a sinful world, that is all we’ll ever be.

And when I acknowledged that fact, I found freedom, because it means while imperfect, our liberty is worth fighting for after all.

Because the government of the people, by the people, for the people, means we still have a chance.

We the people have a choice.

This does not have to be the fall of Rome.

Because the dream—the dream is still beautiful and perfect and whole.

The dream that “men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The modern world tells us that it must be the pursuit of our own happiness, and our own life over everyone else’s.

But I know that is the wrong kind of freedom.

I want to believe in the American Dream. I want to believe that I can make a difference. I want to believe that my voice can be heard. And I want this for you as well.

Because I do not want to add to the chaos.

I do not want to stand on my own.

I want to stand for what is true, and what is right, and what is good.

And I want to stand with you.

So show me that we can stop it.

Because, “United we stand, divided we fall.”

If you want to understand humanity, go to a coffee shop.

Seriously. I’ve spent hours upon hours in local ones, as well as ones across the state— writing. They’re my favorite place to people-watch.

For instance, you can learn a lot about people by what they order. It’s almost like a personality test. Matcha drinkers are usually teen girls, or men in sleeveless shirts with a tendency to wear flat-brimmed yellow hats. They almost always have the beginnings of a mustache as well. (The men, not the girls.) Nitro Cold brewers? They have more of an edge to them. A sort of “don’t mess with me I’m a mom with tats” kind of attitude. The college students who go for that coffee strength often have a nose piercing. Frappuccino drinkers? Always a surprise, but you can definitely tell the kind of day that person’s having. I’ve never seen someone order a Frappuccino without at least the hint of a smile. It’s just too fun a word to say. As for mochas and lattes? They’re a little more of a neutral, everyday kind of beverage for people just living their life. For my part, I stick to tea unless I’m feeling self-destructive. With my low caffeine tolerance, coffee turns me into a nervous wreck.

Jokes aside (I’ve no intention to actually stereotype anyone), one of the best parts about people-watching is the regulars. In a coffee shop in Boulder, there’s this one person in particular who deserves to be a character in a book. He’s a severe looking older man, always dressed in black, with fly away eyebrows and a jacket emblazoned with a skull and crossbones that says, “Tax the Rich.” He wears a special shoe, walks with a cane, and has conversations with thin air while reading different German philosophers. His favorite book was written by a man who believed that the goal of life was to try and make it as unmiserable as possible. I’m pretty sure this customer is also a fan of Nietzsche. He always ends his conversations, with, “good, now go away,” as he returns to his philosophers in silence. The first couple times he did this, his gaze fell directly over my head which scared the heck out of me, let me tell you. It took a few moments to realize the person he was talking to wasn’t really there.

Another regular at that same shop, usually sitting a table or two away, has hair and glasses reminiscent of Benjamin Franklin. A graduate from Harvard, he quotes passages from Homer in the original Greek.

I promise I’m not making this up.

In a coffee shop, one minute I’m excited, exhilarated even. I have compassion towards all humanity, with our quirks and opinions, the strange things we find funny, and the traditions that we have. I love the whole concept of humanity, but not enough to participate. A coffee shop is convenient because you can be so close to society without having to join it. Through my own insecurities, I’m afraid to join, so I remain on the outside looking in.

Perhaps recognizing this failing in myself makes me notice the failings in other people. The person who didn’t tip. The guest who’s talking too loud. The objectifying lyrics of a popular song. The people who have no consideration for others. And the fear that holds me back reminds me of the wars, cruelty, and selfishness of our race. Perhaps I don’t want to join in with humanity after all.

It was this realization the other day as I watched from my corner that brought these words to mind.

“I love mankind, but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

Sometimes, in a coffee shop, I can lose faith. Sometimes just the price of one cup of tea makes me afraid for our economy. Sometimes, when everywhere I turn there are people looking down, scrolling, not connecting or noticing what surrounds them, I find it hard to love other humans individually. Sometimes I even find it hard to love humanity as a whole.

But then I realize that the people I see in this coffee shop have lives and thoughts just as beautiful, as messy, and as complex as my own. They are unique individuals with value in their own right, despite their shortcomings. They are people whom I’d have never have crossed paths with otherwise.

When I’m in a coffee shop, I’m forced to confront the actual face of society that everyone talks of as if it’s a theory instead of an actual, thinking, breathing, mass of people. Politicians and the media tell us there can be no reconciliation across political and religious divides—yet, here I sit, a table away from people whom I might not agree with, but can value nonetheless.

Because my view from a coffee shop is people who’ve decided to spend their time there. With others. As a community, instead of the safety and isolation of their homes.

My view from a coffee shop is the simple, everyday moments of life that we treat as though they don’t hold real significance. A little girl, no more than three, with her mom, who smiles and waves as I look up and smile back. An older couple, holding hands, as the wife asks, “are you sure you’re not hungry?” Two friends meeting to catch up on life, laughing, and crying, and just being together.

So, while I do occasionally grow frustrated with the strangers I come across, and I do sometimes worry about the fate of humanity, I remind myself that the society everyone discusses as if it’s bringing about the end of the world is actually right here—all of us respectfully living our individual lives, side by side, and another quote comes to mind:

“It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.” -Laura Ingalls Wilder

And all those sweet, simple things are visible to me from where I sit in a coffee shop.

Tomorrow, May 8th, marks the 81st year since the end of World War II in Europe.
The war didn’t officially end until Japan’s surrender on September 2nd, 1945, but in honor of VE Day, I wrote a few sketches imagining the aftermath of the war.

These stories serve as a reminder of how quickly the world moves on—forgets.

A reminder that 80 years is not that long ago, and that we still live with the scars from the most devastating war in history.

Greta, Poland 1946

I had never seen my father cry.

I never knew him except as a strong man. His embrace warm, large, safe—filled with the smell of cologne and sweat and peppermint. But I can see him in my mind’s eye, stick thin—starving as they thrust the barrel of the gun against his head. He’s weeping.

I think he knew what they did to my mother. To Olga. To me.

Was it a relief when they blew his brains out and his broken body collapsed in the dirt?

James, America 1950

Five years ago I lay in a crater somewhere in the Pacific next to Johnny Fall, the boy I grew up with—or what was left of him.

The rats skittered over his open intestines in the dark, the bottom half of his torso like the ground meat in the factory where our fathers worked, side by side. His glassy eyes staring at me whenever the blazing green rockets lit up the night sky.

Now I work in an office. Same town, new people. Now I drive home every day to a wife and two kids in a neat suburban neighborhood.

Like nothing ever happened. Like the world’s moved on.

But the metallic scent of blood is still in my nostrils. And I can still feel the pressure of Johnny’s cold hand against mine. And the rats continue to eat at his heart from the inside.

Penny, England 1951

Mama says we used to hide in subway tunnels. Hundreds of people lined along the tracks, crouching or lying down, heads covered.

Mama says she’d hold me tight and whisper lullabies that her mother’s mother used to sing, wrapped tight in Daddy’s jacket that he left when he went to war.

Mama says I never screamed when the roar of German planes tore through the night, and the air raid sirens shrieked.

But all I remember is flickering lights, and dust falling down from the tunnel roof, Mama in her red shawl, her breath in my hair.

I do not remember how the earth shook and centuries of our city crumbled with every drop of a bomb.

I do not remember fear.

Karl, East Germany 1963

There was a time before the wall.

Before the Stasi lined the streets with barbed wire and shot those who went near it.

There was a time before the war.

Before soldier boys, no older than twelve were shot for the nonexistent glory of a broken country.

And there was a time before the Führer.

But I did not know that time.

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Spring means Lilacs—delicate purple flowers with the “heart-shaped leaves” so dear to Whitman. Branches weighed down by the weight of the thick clusters. The sweet, soft scent floating through the warm air.

Spring means sunshine, new life, and therefore, hope.

I must’ve been eight or nine as I watched a scene from the bench of our piano. School had just gotten out, and yellow sunshine filled the air outside the bay window. The brightness of the sun was reflected over the broken asphalt of the street as a girl, possibly twelve, came across the sidewalk with her younger sister. A woman was with her. White and old, she stopped in front of my house, directly across from the window where I sat unseen. She reached out and touched the lilacs, inhaling the sweet scent before making room for the girl. The girl and her sister bent close to the flowers, which curved across the sidewalk due to their weight. The sisters smelled it, laughing. Their short black hair clustered round their head, their hands dark and beautiful against the purple of the flowers.

I do not think the lilacs have ever been as full, as real, as they were to me that day. It seems that the dream of spring is really a memory of what it could be, but has never been. The desire for spring is for what it could be, but never is.

Lilacs are fleeting shadows of what they should be. Their true form (I am inclined to agree with Plato) is not shown. Perhaps I am not the only one who has thought this. The historic meaning for Lilacs is remembrance of lost or early love.

This feeling of loss, the knowledge that something is incomplete, pervades everything. The most beautiful music in the world lacks something. As do the prettiest mountain ranges, the most precious moments.

Something is missing; I can feel it—see it—and it weighs upon me.

It is a strange thought indeed that you can notice the absence of things you’ve never known. How you can be homesick even if you have a home.

At times like this, I cannot help thinking of a line from Macbeth…

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

We are surrounded by shadows of a broken creation.
The more beautiful something is, the more we feel the absence of what it should be, for innocence was not the only thing lost in the fall.

Echoes of Eden linger here, only to remind us how much we truly lost.

Or, perhaps, of how much we have to gain.

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If you discuss what is wrong with the twenty-first century (and there are many things we all find wrong), two things often come up. Firstly, that we have made everything subjective, and secondly that we do not like pain. Pain, we collectively and objectively agree, is messy, harmful, and all-around ugly. “If we are all in agreement that pain is ugly,” you might ask, “what do we collectively believe is beautiful?” That question is not so simple. “Ah, well,” twenty-first century culture will say, “you see, ugliness (at least in the form of pain) is objective, while beauty is subjective.”

In short, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

That saying is of course true, but only to a certain extent. What is considered beautiful does depend on the person who perceives it, but not everything can be beautiful or there would be no such thing as beauty. Furthermore, although beauty can be seen, it cannot be confined to the physical. Otherwise, things unseen, such as music, ideas, scents, dreams, and memories, could not be beautiful. In fact, the idea that beauty is confined to size, symmetry, and sexual desire, as men such as Aristotle, Vitruvius, and Darwin* have suggested, seems to me a very ugly one. Beauty must transcend the eye of the beholder; firstly, because it is not and cannot be wholly subjective, and secondly because it is not confined to the physical.

What then, is beauty?

Everyone, no matter how opinionated they think themselves to be, judges certain things to be beautiful and other things to not be. The question is, by what standard are these objects being judged? For although beauty can be many things, it cannot be anything. The German philosopher Friedrich Schiller argued that beauty must have both unity and variety in whatever form it takes. Furthermore, he states that “physical beauty is an envelope to intellectual and moral beauty, and intellectual beauty…can only have for principle that which is all true.” If beauty is reliant on truth, and if truth is not relative (speaking strictly first principles for the sake of today’s post) then beauty cannot be relative or subjective, either.

Philosophers other than Schiller argue along this same line. Thomas Aquinas used goodness as his standard, stating in his Summa Theologica, “Beauty is the same as good.” While the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.” This is in accordance with Plotinus’s saying, “Behind everything beautiful is the divine.” If beauty is found (or is part of the essence) of goodness and truth, and what is good and what is true cannot be subject to opinion, neither can beauty. Furthermore, if we apply Plotinus’s saying to the Judeo-Christian God, who can only be goodness and truth, it appears that the standard by which we judge beauty is infallible.

Secondly, beauty transcends the eye of the beholder because its “form” shows itself in different ways. Only some beauty can be seen. Other forms, like music, are heard or felt. Plotinus would argue that there is more to beauty even than this. For, “If we go beyond the senses of sight and hearing into unseen regions, the realm of the soul, we will see even more beauty in actions and habits, knowledge and virtue.” Professor of art Christine Perri takes this idea one step further by saying that objects can be beautiful despite their physical appearance because of what they represent.

In response to all of this, our “friends” from the twenty-first century might say, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It can only be seen, and it is subject to one’s opinion,” to which I would respond with two things: Firstly, that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is true, but only to a certain extent. Beauty cannot be confined or subject to the beholder; it must exist outside of being seen. Secondly, that this person’s opinion must be formed off of some standard, or ideal, of beauty. Furthermore, if philosophers are correct in saying that the standard is goodness and truth, inspired and sustained by the good and true God, then someone’s saying things with no goodness and no truth in them are beautiful would be wrong.

People might also argue that something as ugly as pain, for instance, cannot be beautiful, and it is contradictory to say otherwise. But beauty is not, and cannot be, confined to the physical, and only certain beauty can be taken at face value. Unseen things can be beautiful, as we have already stated. Therefore, even something as appalling as physical pain can be beautiful, depending on what that pain represents.

Beauty must transcend the eye of the beholder, and it does—for the following reasons: Firstly, because the beholder has formed his opinion off of some standard and that standard is goodness and truth. Secondly, the “divine” God, who is behind all beauty, is goodness and truth. He is the source of beauty. Therefore, beauty is not, and cannot be, subjective. Lastly, that which is unseen can still be beautiful, for vision can only reveal certain types of beauty.

This leads me to a question I would like to leave you with this week. If goodness, truth, and God are behind the essence of beauty (think Plato’s forms if you’d like), and, if something physically awful can be beautiful because of what it represents, is Christ on the cross therefore beautiful?

*All quotes taken from Writing & Rhetoric Book 10: Thesis Part 1 published by Classical Academic Press.

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Back to the Drawing Board

I have always wanted to be an author. For as long as I can remember I’ve been creating stories—whether to songs that played on the radio, imaginary worlds I lived in, or with a physical pen and paper. Refusing to let age, time, or talent get in my way, I recently finished a manuscript for my first novel. After three years of writing, five drafts, multiple editors, and a year and a half of revisions, I felt ready to pursue publication. This weekend I went to Pinnacle Christian Writer’s Conference with a little bit of hope and a whole lot of anxiety.

The main thing I took away from the conference was that writing a novel is only the first step. An equally important aspect of being an author in today’s market is having an online presence and a following of amazing people (that’s you!) to share my work with.

Why R.E.B. Writes?

Truth. Goodness. Beauty. These are three things that I believe are under attack in our modern world and will be celebrated and appreciated here. R.E.B. Writes will be a unique blend of one or more of the three through a mix of literature, history, and philosophy.

I believe engaging with different worldviews and schools of thought throughout different time periods is crucial to understanding where we are now. R.E.B. Writes will produce quality content (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or blog posts) once a week.

Jerry B. Jenkins signing the book he gifted the conference attendees.

Getting Started

Sometimes achieving one goal adds unexpected new goals to your list. So, here I am, inviting you on this journey with me. Let’s read, learn, and most importantly, enjoy truth, goodness, and beauty together.