[Note: the following is an excerpt from an unedited (except for typo fixes) email  from my friend Brian Dennison.

I've known Brian since middle school. We both grew up in Marietta, Georgia and later lived together in Athens when we were students at UGA. We listened to and talked about a lot of music.

Brian is the only one of my friends who, as the saying goes, "got religion." He was also the first one of us to get married and have kids. At present time he's in Uganda doing missionary work.

Every day my job is writing, editing, and publishing about place and travel, about the experience of place. That's how I define "travel writing" anyway.

Sometimes I find the most transparent and relevant writing about place and experience is in people's emails, which is why I wanted to publish this here.

As a quick set up, my email to Brian talked about "what I believed." I used a terrible metaphor of a bookstore and how people seem to walk into the bookstore and look in different sections but that I identified somehow more with the ground on which the bookstore sits, and maybe the foundation of the store, the concrete forms built by Mexicans--something I've experienced in reality. Then I said basically ignore all that, what I really believe in is "waves." Brian also alludes to an earlier post where I talked about juxtapositions as what matters (part of my philosophy of waves) as well as "inhabiting" a place,  a philosophy attributed to Wendell Berry.

Mainly what I like is that this email, which Brian seemed to write in about 4 minutes, seemed to juxtapose various aspects of his beliefs with his experience in Uganda and also music.  Links added for reference.  ]

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First with respect to place and getting away. Geography is pretty secondary. I think it is more about getting away from more of certain types of people and experiencing more of other types of people. (In fact my biggest problem when being back in the States is an inability to tolerate certain “types” of people, clueless, blabbermouth, women in their 50′s and 60′s in particular).

The great thing about Uganda is the relative absence of sarcasm and an emphasis on the pace required to have a relational exchange. Also this culture is not soaked in self-absorption. But it is also a place where child sacrifice is practiced, defilement is rampant, the prosperity gospel is pervasive, corruption is everywhere, people drive like they do not care if you or them or anyone else dies, mobs carry out instant violent justice and people construct cultural self-righteousness based almost entirely on the intensity of their anti-homosexual stand.

All that said, I am happy to have all of that in exchange for the no sarcasm, relational, non-me bit. At least it makes for a nice break from all that. Those are particularly refreshing attributes if you are a teacher like I am for now.

As for belief, my belief is a gift that was intense, inescapable and repetitive enough that any intellectual disconnects are eventually overcome. I have no self-righteousness in my belief. Like I said, a gift of intervention and historical accident, but I am very glad to have it despite myself. I am told that I would like Michael Polanyi (i.e. I would agree with what he says and feel more validated in my belief to read someone put my thoughts into such good prose). So if you worked at Barnes and Noble perhaps you would point me in that direction. I have not read him yet though. But I am sort of glad he is out there because he gives me a validating, short hand way of letting a certain set of people know where I am coming from. Labels can be tools for human interaction when you are too lazy, busy or disinterested to really interact. I will have to get around to reading him one day just to make sure the short hand is basically right.

I also like the idea of seeing the world like Wendell Berry. But that is bullshit. That is really not me. Just a me that seems nice, just, even and sustainable. Once again, not me.

More on belief….. the guy that really strikes me in terms of belief is Heidegger when he writes about living an authentic life. I think it is important to live what you really believe. Unfortunately what many of us really believe can be very depressing. But you still have to live it. At least the idea is noble. For some it is probably better to just ignore the abyss. I think we are wired to bail on the abyss when it starts to suck us in. Back to Heidegger for the unconvinced, I think the Flaming Lips are pretty good at singing about that sort of stuff. Because of the substance of the gift of belief I have been giving I think my “real” belief is incredible hopeful and empowering. But I sympathize with Heidegger and the Lips.

As for belief coming up from the foundations, I hear you. For Erasmus the ground was to go back to the Greek and clean up the messed up translations of the New Testament. I know as a Christian I am supposed to say everything is in the Bible. But I am always struggling with what is meant by the “Word of God.” When the guys who wrote the books of the Bible were talking about the “Word of God” they were not taking about their own words. When John wrote about “the Word” he was not even talking about the Bible. So I am not Thomas Jefferson (ripping out pages I do not agree with) but I do play favorites. Some guys, the Psalmists, Isaiah and Jeremiah come to mind that did a much better job of putting an insight on truth that is beyond our grasp on to the page than others. Truth reflected in the mirror darkly being the best worldly translation of my belief. Some people are better at tuning in to the waves than others. Some times those better turners tune in better than others. (Some girls mothers are bigger than other girls mothers) Psychedelics can help but that makes it seem pretty materialistic/biological except for the fact that when you experienced it you knew that you were tuning in to something in a distorted unholy way that was definitely not materialistic or biological. But of course how do you know, you were on acid.

The thing about belief that always strikes me is how it easily and secretly it washes away no matter how strong it might be at any given moment. It is impossible retain as a concrete image/experience no matter how intense or amazing a belief revelation might be. So I guess that is like waves.

Belief as waves can get you into a light thing and how they are not really waves but particles, yet they are wave, etc. But you would sound like the DJ from Northern Exposure. The spoken word (“the Word”?) is composed of waves. If we were truly spoken into existence we were created by waves. Can waves exist outside of matter? Must they? Then perhaps they are something worth believing in. I guess I am sounding like a cliche version of my good buddy Umberto Eco, who, when he was younger wrote to me in juxtapositions better than anyone else ever has, (pure fun, but as meaningful as Tom and Jerry) but now reads like the ghost of a tired Poldy at a pub in Dublin trying to sound like Eco.