See the tree how big it's grown

This is the oak I planted from an acorn dropped by an oak growing in my grand parents' yard ca. 1965. I remember scooping a bunch of acorns into a Swisher Sweet cigar box and scattering the acorns all around our front and back yard. This oak survived, thrived and grew. The Japanese maples mom planted are gone (mom always planted Japanese maples), but this tree remains. I'm as surprised as anyone. I know that one day it will be cut down, but so far, even though it takes up the space of two or three cars, free market principles haven't brought about its demise. I didn't plant it per se: as I remarked I scattered it around, purely by chance, and this tree is the product of that chance. Chance is the foundation of my art. Well, ever since I was in high school I've found chance based art liberating. Duchamp, Cage, Klee, Pollock - all used chance elements in various constructive ways.

Today a death occurred in the emergency department. A man who'd had a gastric bypass (and he's not the only person to die after this procedure recently) passed out at home and was brought back to the ER where he died when something happened to stop his heart. His wife and sister were distraught. Their church is one of those charismatic churches that emphasize healing and miracles - that God commands us to command him and that our words, our confession brings about reality. The wife looks at me and says, "he's still warm. We can bring him back. There are miracles. You do believe in miracles!" It dawns on me, she expects me to act like I can bring him back from the dead. She expects me to begin praying demanding God to make this man live. And I'm stunned. I say nothing at first only to flatly say that yes, I believe in miracles. Inside I'm thinking, "if I bring this guy back, I'll have to bring everyone back." Once you bring someone back from the dead everyone will demand, will feel entitled - they'll say, "you brought him back, what about my husband? Doesn't my husband deserve to come back? Why isn't my husband good enough?" And then family, "you brought a stranger back, why not aunt Mildred? Isn't she as deserving as some stranger?" Then people are knocking on the door at 2 am: all demanding that someone be brought back to life. Once you start bringing people back from the dead you can kiss a ski vacation to Wyoming good bye - and I want to go to Wyoming: we're going this New Years - and I'm not sacrificing time with my wife and in-laws to raise some guy from the dead, because that's not the end of it. Then people are crashing their cars into trees and trains, once twice thrice - fifty times and more: why not, "Fred'll bring em back." And then the whole country is a Christian zombie nation, people dying and popping back up every day. And then when I die, what about me - no one's bringing me back. The Christian zombies won't care; they won't try.
Also I looked at this guy and I thought, "Jesus died. Jesus was deader than this guy, stone cold non-heart pumping, non-lung expanding, non-circulatory brain dead dead. Jesus was deaddeaddead. And to just willy nilly raise someone up who's still warm seems to dishonor the Lord's death. Death was good enough for Jesus. Death freaks us out; but it didn't freak him out. he was content to be in God's hands - even a God whom he'd felt had forsaken him. "
I'm not looking forward to death. More than ever I value life and want to keep on living; and I would be crushed if I lost Jami. I remember my mom's death, and my grand father's death, and my grand mother's death, and so many others. They all affected me but not the same way. I cried, I felt empty, I was relieved.
Faith to me is more real when it lives without moving mountains. Real faith lives in the fact: the death, the loss, the disappointment. Real faith finds joy when all is down - not a fake joy, pretending. There's something about the kind of faith that exercises the miraculous to engineer my wishes and desires when I wish and desire them that seems like a stupid faith, a dull brained dim watery faith - such a faith denies the pain, the suffering.
But who doesn't want quick results. We live in a culture of results. The free market ideology is about results and immediacies - no waiting, no long term - maximize gains, and productivity is the bottom line, a bottom line that justifies everything. There's no room for death. Death is a luxury, an inconvenience, laziness. Death is nonproductive. Death says there's something more than the bottom line. Imagine a Bergman film, the pointing bony finger of death - but imagine death being shocked at the laughing feasting figure of Jesus. And that is our faith: death sits down at the table with us, but only as a guest, only to pass the salt.