Tuesday, February 1, 2011
"With Pollyanna" - Bill Eager
Yeah.
Freaking infectiously happy.
But I want to use this as refrain in writing a story...obviously EarthBound/Mother and Chrono Trigger inspired...just like everything else I write...but maybe this time it will be the best story I can write.
Just.
Maybe.
Thank you Jesus.
Existential Turnips
I really have no idea what that title is supposed to mean.
It might very well has come to a point where the most sense I can make out of life is that it is literally nonsense.
The more I learn about those I'm close to the more I realize how dark and broken this world is.
Maybe I am negative but maybe it's the fact this is a broken and disjointed world spinning out of control.
I look and see how frigid and unforgiven this world is as it seems the best among us are kicked around the most and when they fall down they are stomped on extra hard for daring to be talented or trying hard.
I know life isn't just this thankless struggle on a bleak island surrounded by darkness, demons screeching in the night and the world dissolving into Silent Hill every few minutes...but all the pain, all the human misery, all the broken emotions...all the pain in people's day to day lives is worse than any monster and any Hell excessive fundamentalists can dream up in their off time.
Maybe it has taken me almost twenty-five years of my life and the last few years spent as a chronically sick and disjointed misfit just sort of falling from place to place...but I think I am finally starting to feel like I am somewhere I am supposed to be.
The more I really read and try to understand the Gospels, the more I see that Jesus really was that "man of constant sorrows" (Isiah 53) and it was by choice. He chose to be born to a poor family and into a social situation where they would be alienated because of everyone thinking he was a bastard child...He chose to seek out students who were social outcasts or viewed as being unwanted and disgusting...not only were they students but they became friends...He saw the people no one wanted, the ones without potential, the screw ups, the rejects, the fools, the ones at the end of their ropes...and those were His friends and the ones He called His family.
If that made no literal or logical sense in the first century Roman province of Judea, then I suppose it doesn't make much sense in twenty-first century Alabama.
At least to those who haven't really seen Jesus.
I get asked on a regular basis, "What are you going to do with your life?" and I have a series of stock answers I reply with depending on my mood or whatever seems best at the time.
Honestly, I don't care about titles and I try to lie to myself and say my health is going to get better and the pain and symptoms aren't getting worse (Is it a mark of a bad liar that I can't even convince myself?)...where will I be in a few months, a year or a decade?
This is the best plan I have been able to put together after years of research, planning and lots of papers:
I want to help people.
I want to pray.
I want both of those things push me to giving up my notions of comfort so I can help more.
Jesus is with the poor and broken.
He may be invited in happier and richer sections of town but I am not sure he will turn up because of being busy helping the poor and broken...at least from how I have read the Bible and from the writers of those I trust.
One of those "case in points" would be this:
"“If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14.26 … the theological student learns that these words appear in the New Testament, and in one or another exegetical resource book he finds the explanation that to hate in this passage and in a few other passages by weakening means love less, esteem less, honor not, count as nothing. The context in which these words appear, however, does not seem to affirm the appealing explanation. In the verse following this we are told that someone who wants to erect a tower first of all makes a rough estimate to see if he is able to finish it, lest he be mocked later. The close proximity of this story and the verse seems to indicate that the words are to be taken in their full terror in order that each person may examine himself to see if he can erect the building."
-Soren Kierkegaard, "Fear and Trembling"
When it seems like theology was becoming a crutch to satisfy myself I turned to philosophy to make myself have to dig for answers about why I believe I have a right to hope when those I love are wracked with doubt, depression and self destruction.
No matter how I try to approach it, this world is screwed up and the only thing that even seems to do any good is hug the person wracked with guilt and pain, shaking and crying, and tell them that I love them.
If they do not see Jesus in my love, in my actions, in the very breath I breath...what right do I have to invoke the Holy Lamb of God, the only thing that is of any worth or goodness in my life, in my self-righteous ventures that are in vain?
I suppose that seems a bit drab and depressing.
That isn't my intention per say.
If anything, I sort of feel a bit more confident that moving back to Mobile and attempting to continue my studies while feeling like I am falling apart wasn't as stupid as it may have seemed at first.
I am becoming a bit more certain about how unimportant "practical" things are and that learning to really pray, really love, really spend time with people is about the most important thing I can do.
If you take away nothing more from this pompous and excessively long meandering spewage of verbiage...know you are loved.
You are more beautiful, more worthy, more needed, more desired and more loved than you will ever have the faith to believe.
Nothing can extinguish the fires of eternity and that is what drives the madness of God's love for you.
At least that is my belief.
Take it for what you will my friend.
It might very well has come to a point where the most sense I can make out of life is that it is literally nonsense.
The more I learn about those I'm close to the more I realize how dark and broken this world is.
Maybe I am negative but maybe it's the fact this is a broken and disjointed world spinning out of control.
I look and see how frigid and unforgiven this world is as it seems the best among us are kicked around the most and when they fall down they are stomped on extra hard for daring to be talented or trying hard.
I know life isn't just this thankless struggle on a bleak island surrounded by darkness, demons screeching in the night and the world dissolving into Silent Hill every few minutes...but all the pain, all the human misery, all the broken emotions...all the pain in people's day to day lives is worse than any monster and any Hell excessive fundamentalists can dream up in their off time.
Maybe it has taken me almost twenty-five years of my life and the last few years spent as a chronically sick and disjointed misfit just sort of falling from place to place...but I think I am finally starting to feel like I am somewhere I am supposed to be.
The more I really read and try to understand the Gospels, the more I see that Jesus really was that "man of constant sorrows" (Isiah 53) and it was by choice. He chose to be born to a poor family and into a social situation where they would be alienated because of everyone thinking he was a bastard child...He chose to seek out students who were social outcasts or viewed as being unwanted and disgusting...not only were they students but they became friends...He saw the people no one wanted, the ones without potential, the screw ups, the rejects, the fools, the ones at the end of their ropes...and those were His friends and the ones He called His family.
If that made no literal or logical sense in the first century Roman province of Judea, then I suppose it doesn't make much sense in twenty-first century Alabama.
At least to those who haven't really seen Jesus.
I get asked on a regular basis, "What are you going to do with your life?" and I have a series of stock answers I reply with depending on my mood or whatever seems best at the time.
Honestly, I don't care about titles and I try to lie to myself and say my health is going to get better and the pain and symptoms aren't getting worse (Is it a mark of a bad liar that I can't even convince myself?)...where will I be in a few months, a year or a decade?
This is the best plan I have been able to put together after years of research, planning and lots of papers:
I want to help people.
I want to pray.
I want both of those things push me to giving up my notions of comfort so I can help more.
Jesus is with the poor and broken.
He may be invited in happier and richer sections of town but I am not sure he will turn up because of being busy helping the poor and broken...at least from how I have read the Bible and from the writers of those I trust.
One of those "case in points" would be this:
"“If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14.26 … the theological student learns that these words appear in the New Testament, and in one or another exegetical resource book he finds the explanation that to hate in this passage and in a few other passages by weakening means love less, esteem less, honor not, count as nothing. The context in which these words appear, however, does not seem to affirm the appealing explanation. In the verse following this we are told that someone who wants to erect a tower first of all makes a rough estimate to see if he is able to finish it, lest he be mocked later. The close proximity of this story and the verse seems to indicate that the words are to be taken in their full terror in order that each person may examine himself to see if he can erect the building."
-Soren Kierkegaard, "Fear and Trembling"
When it seems like theology was becoming a crutch to satisfy myself I turned to philosophy to make myself have to dig for answers about why I believe I have a right to hope when those I love are wracked with doubt, depression and self destruction.
No matter how I try to approach it, this world is screwed up and the only thing that even seems to do any good is hug the person wracked with guilt and pain, shaking and crying, and tell them that I love them.
If they do not see Jesus in my love, in my actions, in the very breath I breath...what right do I have to invoke the Holy Lamb of God, the only thing that is of any worth or goodness in my life, in my self-righteous ventures that are in vain?
I suppose that seems a bit drab and depressing.
That isn't my intention per say.
If anything, I sort of feel a bit more confident that moving back to Mobile and attempting to continue my studies while feeling like I am falling apart wasn't as stupid as it may have seemed at first.
I am becoming a bit more certain about how unimportant "practical" things are and that learning to really pray, really love, really spend time with people is about the most important thing I can do.
If you take away nothing more from this pompous and excessively long meandering spewage of verbiage...know you are loved.
You are more beautiful, more worthy, more needed, more desired and more loved than you will ever have the faith to believe.
Nothing can extinguish the fires of eternity and that is what drives the madness of God's love for you.
At least that is my belief.
Take it for what you will my friend.
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