Searching For Words

And Merry Christmas

The rain clouds parted for a few hours yesterday, so I went for a walk in the sun through the centuries-old streets of our seaside village. I intentionally didn’t listen to music or a podcast and simply wanted to wander for an hour or two with my thoughts, the sunshine, smell of the sea, and the sound of the seagulls.

As I put one foot in front of the other and let my mind drift, I realized my life these days can be summed up in the expression: searching for words.

At a table with a group of friends, following the conversation in ridiculously fast Spanish and Gallego, I’m searching for the proper words to add something to the discussion. Someone turns to me and asks something directly, and I’m often searching for words to express myself fully because while I surely speak well enough to hang out and have a good time, there’s always that gap between what I’d say in English and the way I can say it in Spanish.

In front of a classroom of young restless students, I’m searching for the simple words they’d comprehend yet would keep them semi-engaged in the task at hand.

At the computer for hours on end trying to chop out another page, I’m searching for words, searching for words again, and searching for a more refined structure.

I’ve often used the metaphor of building a house to describe writing 18 Uncles the book. The year home, I was gathering materials at the job site, needing a proper blueprint before I moved forward.

Now I have the materials and blueprint and am moving forward on the construction. That inevitably means I start in one direction and realize I need to adjust. But that tweak means I need to go back and change what I’d done previously to make the whole thing functional. I laid a foundation, installed drains and sewers, and constructed the frame, but then could see I needed to change the room layout, which inevitably means making more adjustments.

One hundred pages of work and I arrive at a place that should have come near the beginning. I realize I need to pivot back and restructure. Luckily that’s lightyears easier in writing than it is in home construction.

The writing process is such a combination of blue-collar mechanical work every day to build structures and the artistic touches of a perfectly refined kitchen, with every detail thought of and done to the best of one’s abilities.

I’m still chipping away. I’ve got about three of thirteen chapters written out, but I’m sure there’ll be many many many more edits and adjustments.

In the meantime, I’m still searching for words.

As Christmas is coming and I’m searching for proper words, I thought I’d share something from one of my literary and political heroes, journalist, author, and Harvard Divinity School PhD. Chris Hedges, a man who speaks and writes with a moral clarity that had me hooked from the first minute I heard him on a podcast five-odd years ago.

About Christmas, he said recently:

In the early 1980s I was in a refugee camp for Guatemalans who had fled the war into Honduras. It was a cold, dreary winter afternoon. The peasant farmers and their families, living in filth and mud, were decorating their tents with strips of colored paper. That night, they said, they would celebrate the flight of Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus to Egypt to escape the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem ordered by Herod. The celebration is known as the Day of the Holy Innocents.

“Why is this such an important day?” I asked.

“It was on this day that Christ became a refugee,” a farmer answered.

I knew the passage from Matthew about the flight to Egypt by heart. I had heard my father, a Presbyterian minister, read it in services every Christmas in the farm town in upstate New York where I grew up. But it took an illiterate farmer, who had fled in fear with his wife and children from the murderous rampages of the Guatemalan army and the death squads, who no doubt counted friends, even relatives, among the dead, a man who had lost everything he owned, to explain it to me.

The story of Christmas—like the story of the crucifixion, in which Jesus is abandoned by his disciples, attacked by the mob, condemned to death by the state, placed on death row and executed—is not written for the oppressors. It is written for the oppressed. And what is quaint and picturesque to those who live in privilege is visceral and empowering to those the world condemns.

…

Christmas is not about the virgin birth. It is not about angels. It is not even about a historical Jesus. To debate these topics is to engage in a theological Trivial Pursuit. The Christmas story is about learning how to be human, about kneeling before a newborn infant who is helpless, vulnerable, despised and poor. It is about inverting the world’s values. It is about understanding that the religious life—and this life can be lived with or without a religious creed—calls on us to protect and nurture the least among us, those demonized and rejected.

I’ve been hooked on that man’s perspective for years. He’s not for everyone, but he’s undeniably rooted in history, theology, and an unwavering moral compass.

And he uses poetic, powerful words.

They’re inspirational as I continue my search for more of them.

I do have new blogs about the Keweenaw and Apostolics that I’ll probably release in early 2025 as I continue to work on the manuscript.

Thank you so so so much for sticking around and supporting the journey.

I’m excited to hit the new year running full steam.

We will get to the finish line. This rock will be pushed up the mountain.

One of the best gifts of life is a proper test of our abilities, to have to truly focus, find high levels of discipline, grind, and make it to the end.

I’m on the journey: three chapters of a proposed thirteen. The proposal is almost done as well, so I’ll hopefully be shopping that around in January and February of next year.

Thanks again for sticking around and showing love.

I appreciate every single frickin’ read.

Merry Christmas.

One Love

Mitch

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