California,
We are sorry. We’re so sorry. For what you’ve lost and what you’re losing and for the fear. We mourn the smoke that filled your sky today. We mourn the flames that took your homes. We can’t imagine. We’re mad, though we don’t even know who to be mad at.
You are brave and beautiful and strong. You are important. Please keep fighting and breathing, and please know that you are in our thoughts and hopes and prayers tonight. In this moment, in a thing as small as a blog, we say we’re with you… from across a country, from across a planet, we say we’re one tonight. i was going to write “Hi Guys” here but i don’t know if that fits so i’ll just keep typing…
It’s late and i’m exhausted but i came across the wise words of a friend just now, and i wanted to share them. i had wanted to write something about the fires, but didn’t know what to say. Fire comes up in my writing sometimes, before this week, as a metaphor or an illustration, a way to communicate something powerful, something fierce, some great loss. But it feels absurd to go there right now, to speak in metaphor, when fire is literally filling southern California with smoke and fear, when homes and lives are being destroyed.
Our team was driving back from Miami tonight, and it started to rain. And the rain felt really unfair because we’re not the ones who need it. Why is it raining in Florida while California burns? Heck, there’s a drought in Georgia, but it’s raining in Florida. It should rain in those places.
i think we can all agree that life is hard. Most of the time? I would say yes. Mostly, i’m aware that my heart and mind are fragile. Dangerous places. As we get older, or maybe you already have, we realize our bodies are fragile. They break too. And now we’re reminded in these days that look like scenes from a movie, that even our planet is a dangerous place. If it’s not one thing, it’s another…
i can’t say why some people find love when others walk alone, why some feel free when others carry chains. i can’t say why some doors open but some stay slammed, why some people seem to have perfect families when others live among the screaming. i don’t know why it rained in Florida tonight.
A lot of people do one of two things:
1. Ignore the questions and pain of other people.
2. Throw easy answers at difficult questions.
i think much of TWLOHA has been, and is, about meeting each other in our questions, walking together through the dark times, encouraging such a life… so maybe tonight this can be a place for your questions, for your prayers or your fears or your fires. What does that mean? i don’t know exactly. Life isn’t fair. i know that. Life is really hard.
We have to help fight the fires in the lives of our friends. We need to invite other people to help us fight the fires in our lives. Occasionally, something as deep as a home is lost, and that is when we mourn, when we cry and rest and somehow fight to smile. And somehow try to walk together in believing that it’s possible to build something back, to know new life, that redemption does happen, that the fires do, will, eventually fade. This too shall pass. The smoke does clear.
Well, i wasn’t going to write anything but i guess i just did. i wanted to share the words below with you. i came across them on my friend Jon’s page tonight. Jon Foreman is a dear friend and a hero of mine, and San Diego is his home. He loves it, and he’s shared so much of it with me over the last few years. Jon is away from home right now, out on tour with Switchfoot. He wrote these words yesterday:
“J. D. Salinger and St. Paul and dark black smoke
by jon foreman
So I’m listnin’ to the jason molina box set. reminds me a bit of sun kill moon in a really good way. with some atmospheric “spirit of eden” things every now and then.
it’s grey out. it was grey out yesterday. but it’s not raining. it was raining yesterday.
still trying to get any news about home. rough. feels like a world away. fires.
So I find it strangely appropriate that we’re touring to support habitat for humanity, an ironic twist in the plot, with the homes burning back on the west coast. It’s so strangely fitting that I wrote a song with Thieson for this tour on a bus that burned down a few hours later. But you see, this plot, this divine comedy strays awfully close to tragedy.
It’s a strange book and I’m inside it. So I’m trying to pin down the details about the the plot in this book. The one where I’m the protagonist in a plot much larger than I am. A book that I can’t simply put down when I’m frustrated. With no bookmark, no remote control. The pages write themselves with very little effort of my own. And yet I’m in there. I’m written into the book.
I was wondering today whether the houses that we help build with Habitat in SD are still standing. I don’t know how this ends.
Ruth has gone on downstairs, the bass frequencies are vibrating everything in the room… and a world away houses are burning down in my hometown. What can you do?
The good guys get gunned down. The bad guys do fine. That can’t be the end of the story… But the fires are still burning back home… and this thought kept running through my mind all day, “Oh God, have mercy on me a sinner.” I think that’s the prayer in Franny and Zoey… But St. Paul says the same thing
Pray that God is merciful,
jon”
Say a prayer for the people of California tonight. Fear is an awful place to live, as is loss, and thousands are there right now. Say a prayer for the fires and the fighting and the rain.
Peace to you tonight.
jamie
ps: [url=http://www.myspace.com/jonforeman]Here’s a link to Jon’s page[/url].