We’re Barrett and Zeke, two college friends and roommates who are way past college (and the roommate phase of life) who nonetheless have remained friends. Both of us were raised as Christians and have, at different times and for different reasons, walked away from our faith heritage. Yet, at different times and for similar reasons, we have returned to the faith we grew up in to discover and live a more full and faithful life. Still Tyger is our passion project to more fully recognize the divine beauty in our lives and others’, celebrating it all.

In William Blake’s 1794 poem “The Tyger” he reflects on the nature of God and the nature of God’s creation, by contrasting the fearsome nature of the tiger with the gentle, meek nature of a lamb, extolled in a separate poem similarly titled. How can lamb and tiger (or tyger, if we must) coexist? How can the paragon of gentility and the hellish ferocity of a tiger be outputs of the same God, the same creator? Blake asks the question, “What immortal hand or eye,/ Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” at the end of the first stanza, before subtly shifting the question in the last stanza by asking “What immortal hand or eye,/ Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” (emphasis mine). 

The seemingly conflicting natures of the lamb and tiger are not a matter of “could” or capacity, but a matter of daring. A daring Creator makes daring creations that challenge us to reconcile the loving and caring gentleness of a lamb with the ferocious strength and cunning of an apex predator. God is bigger than we think, more complex than we understand, more loving and caring than we believe, more ferocious than we want to see. In a sense, God’s very being is daring us to enter a place of contradiction, confusion, and possibility. It’s a place rife with the complications of an eternal God on a mortal mind, a place that asks us to lay aside our thoughts, our beliefs, our movement, our attachments. It’s a place that asks for stillness in heart, mind, body, and soul. 

We were led to this place in our respective faith journeys through the shared route of contemplative practices. Through stillness into stillness in times when our faith was in a whirlwind of doubt, pain, and resentment. In a world that is constantly asking us to do more, be more, try harder, go deeper, we had to learn (and are still learning) to let go of those things we spend our internal resources on to be still, non-attached, reliant. And from that place, we discovered a mutual desire to share the wins and the, much more frequent, losses and pains as we try to practice something counter-cultural, counter-traditional, and seemingly counter-productive. 

And that’s where Still Tyger comes from. This is a place where we share the wins and losses of a different way of journeying in the hopes that others might find encouragement and inspiration to find God in the stillness as well. Twice a week (Monday and Thursday) we will share our poetry, reflections, thoughts, and interviews with others in order to connect with those around us in honest and vulnerable conversation. In other words, Still Tyger is a place where we can wholly be ourselves, share ourselves, and learn ourselves, and encourage others to do the same.