manasclerk and me

I’m back at the Blue Bottle again, sucking down latte, and burning up wifi. I am tired, and am using this moment to reflect on a three day run of productivity that has left me in an exhausted, but pleasant haze. I use the word “productivity” euphemistically: three twenty-hour days of jobhunting, blogging and Internet research has produced a few silly contract leads, a new blogsite for my friend John, and an encouraging little bump in my own website’s statistics. Now I need this little coffee break to pull back and figure out what “productive” should mean.

I’ve been poking around Manasclerk’s Power Struggle lately, when I make the time for it, and have especially enjoyed his posts about faith and Grace. In fact, I’ve been meaning to write a tribute post to Manasclerk’s blog, but have stalled out, merely because I am having trouble writing well enough to convey how his blog has encouraged me. So, Manasclerk, to paraphrase Tenacious D, this post isn’t the Greatest Post in the World, its just a tribute…

Manasclerk is one of those Christians who eschew cliches and plastic God words; he expresses his faith in common language, sometimes calling upon the power of gritty vernacular. To me this is refreshing, appropriate and eerily familiar. I grew up among Christians with a staggering penchent for the puerile and a talent for the trite. My rebellion, my belligerence toward God’s unflinching mercy to me is that I express myself to Him as purely and simply as I can. And when I’m feeling emotional, I use forceful language. My hometown Christians would, I am fond of imagining, shudder to hear me pray the way I do. But that is how I tell God that when I pray to Him, I mean to speak only with Him. My profanity in the presence of His holiness is unfit for others to hear, and this underscores its sacredness.

I do not know what Manasclerk’s refreshingly plain speech means to him. Of course I’d like to imagine he feels the same way about it that I do. Whatever the case, his gritty honesty clashes with his obvious devotion to Christ, and the resulting conflict is beautiful to me, for I have embraced the same power struggle.