Wednesday, February 2, 2011
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.
Monday, January 31, 2011
"Hulking, smashing, I come crashing,
nothing like when I was small.
I am unstoppable, I am the cannonball.
That feeble coward that you knew,
has undergone an overhaul.
I am unstoppable, I am the cannonball
And everyone will say it's just an accident,
like some mishap or a tragedy.
I think that failure has a purpose,
and I don't believe it's chance if I fall.
And I know that if I ever do fall, He will catch me.
And if He ever lets me fall down,
for the good of those who believe Him,
He will make me into a cannonball.
Unblemished, and faultless.
A burning luminescence.
Unequaled precision, beyond your scope of vision.
Cannonball."
nothing like when I was small.
I am unstoppable, I am the cannonball.
That feeble coward that you knew,
has undergone an overhaul.
I am unstoppable, I am the cannonball
And everyone will say it's just an accident,
like some mishap or a tragedy.
I think that failure has a purpose,
and I don't believe it's chance if I fall.
And I know that if I ever do fall, He will catch me.
And if He ever lets me fall down,
for the good of those who believe Him,
He will make me into a cannonball.
Unblemished, and faultless.
A burning luminescence.
Unequaled precision, beyond your scope of vision.
Cannonball."
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Peace and Love, Hope and Dreams
How has this world been held together when there is so much mistrust, so much pain, so much hate and such endless self destruction?
Somehow, someway, some means that I truly do not understand...I am trusted.
The personal and broken lives of friends...and they trust me to hear, to listen, to see their wounds...a broken and tired child who doesn't know his left hand from his right...and yet, with just a prayer and hope...sometimes things can be okay.
Is this what you meant to be community?
Just this...simple hope that by being honest...by trying to do the right thing...somehow, someway...things can somehow work out?
I know it's stupid but sometimes I think I must have done something horrible, something terribly sinful to "deserve" all the pain and doubt I have. Not being able to sleep because of the levels of pain and then to hurt so much that I can't write, much less pray like I used to...but...isn't this love?
Love requires honesty.
Love requires disarming.
Love requires pain.
For love to grow, muscles have to be stretched, pulled, broken, stitched back together...and repeated, again and again...again and again.
God it hurts.
But if this is life, if this is what it means to live in live...and "fellowship" I suppose I can say it might just be worth losing my life over.
I still have so many doubts about being called and where I am being called or even if I can do anything right...but even with all my doubts...You believe in me.
Which is painful but I can't help but believe.
It goes beyond what I can choose to do and you love me.
Love me.
Love. Me.
After all the unintentional pain I have caused...been apart of...thank you for holding me, keeping me close and not letting me fade into the dark.
Somehow, someway, some means that I truly do not understand...I am trusted.
The personal and broken lives of friends...and they trust me to hear, to listen, to see their wounds...a broken and tired child who doesn't know his left hand from his right...and yet, with just a prayer and hope...sometimes things can be okay.
Is this what you meant to be community?
Just this...simple hope that by being honest...by trying to do the right thing...somehow, someway...things can somehow work out?
I know it's stupid but sometimes I think I must have done something horrible, something terribly sinful to "deserve" all the pain and doubt I have. Not being able to sleep because of the levels of pain and then to hurt so much that I can't write, much less pray like I used to...but...isn't this love?
Love requires honesty.
Love requires disarming.
Love requires pain.
For love to grow, muscles have to be stretched, pulled, broken, stitched back together...and repeated, again and again...again and again.
God it hurts.
But if this is life, if this is what it means to live in live...and "fellowship" I suppose I can say it might just be worth losing my life over.
I still have so many doubts about being called and where I am being called or even if I can do anything right...but even with all my doubts...You believe in me.
Which is painful but I can't help but believe.
It goes beyond what I can choose to do and you love me.
Love me.
Love. Me.
After all the unintentional pain I have caused...been apart of...thank you for holding me, keeping me close and not letting me fade into the dark.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
Quote of the Day:
"Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these my brothers you’ve done it to me. And this is what I’ve come to think. That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in a beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken."
-Rich Mullins
-Rich Mullins
I really wish people would not always tell me everything.
Confession booth Matthew doesn't like being a confession booth.
I try to not be a jerk and be judgmental...but rules are there for a reason.
Oie.
SO many things...worries...things to pray for...to hope for...
Maybe I'll be free soon.
Released from the pain and confusion.
Confession booth Matthew doesn't like being a confession booth.
I try to not be a jerk and be judgmental...but rules are there for a reason.
Oie.
SO many things...worries...things to pray for...to hope for...
Maybe I'll be free soon.
Released from the pain and confusion.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Quote of the Day:
"We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor."
-Shane Claiborne
-Shane Claiborne
Why was I so stupid and gullible to trust her in the first place?
I don't need a reminder of a few days, a few weeks, a few months...what I was thinking and doing an exact year ago...
Chasing after fantasies and mist...running after a rainbow that was never there...not even finding gold...but just realizing how naive, how trusting and how STUPID I am.
That sort of brings all those thoughts nicely together.
I let myself get used by emotional and mental leeches.
When I should just carry around a box of matches and when one of them touches me I could set fire to them.
Possibly, the hint may be taken.
Although I doubt the intelligence runs that high.
I don't need a reminder of a few days, a few weeks, a few months...what I was thinking and doing an exact year ago...
Chasing after fantasies and mist...running after a rainbow that was never there...not even finding gold...but just realizing how naive, how trusting and how STUPID I am.
That sort of brings all those thoughts nicely together.
I let myself get used by emotional and mental leeches.
When I should just carry around a box of matches and when one of them touches me I could set fire to them.
Possibly, the hint may be taken.
Although I doubt the intelligence runs that high.
You know...if I write a "what if" story about what never happened and well, let's face it, what will NEVER happen...it would at least get some of these thoughts out and I'll have written a piece in a genre I've never tried before.
"Annoying, stupid, whining, crying and etc. useless crap that should be burned instead of read."
Or you know...that is just the placeholder until I find a more acronym friendly title.
"Annoying, stupid, whining, crying and etc. useless crap that should be burned instead of read."
Or you know...that is just the placeholder until I find a more acronym friendly title.
God, I need to write.
I need to get these thoughts out.
Writing feels like one the last avenues I have.
I can do that decently and sometimes do something good.
Maybe even something that is right.
"Three strands of wire,
Threefold the tie that binds.
She is the one thing on the earth for which he still pines.
To his heart she was life,
So he prays to his Maker with a sigh,
As his fire sputters out,
Because robots never cry."
" Gloria, in excelces deo.
Glory, gloria.
Too weak to wonder,
too tired to care,
Jesus Christ, are you really there?
I've fallen down,
Can't pull myself back up.
I'm going to drown, have mercy,
Have mercy.
I need you now,
Not words or a feeling.
But Jesus Christ,
I've hit the ceiling.
Your love,
Your mercy,
Your light unending.
Your hope,
Your peace,
Your strength my heart is mending."
I need to get these thoughts out.
Writing feels like one the last avenues I have.
I can do that decently and sometimes do something good.
Maybe even something that is right.
"Three strands of wire,
Threefold the tie that binds.
She is the one thing on the earth for which he still pines.
To his heart she was life,
So he prays to his Maker with a sigh,
As his fire sputters out,
Because robots never cry."
" Gloria, in excelces deo.
Glory, gloria.
Too weak to wonder,
too tired to care,
Jesus Christ, are you really there?
I've fallen down,
Can't pull myself back up.
I'm going to drown, have mercy,
Have mercy.
I need you now,
Not words or a feeling.
But Jesus Christ,
I've hit the ceiling.
Your love,
Your mercy,
Your light unending.
Your hope,
Your peace,
Your strength my heart is mending."
Alter of the Soul
Well...I think I manged to slam that door on my own face.
Do I at least get some sort of bonus points for trying to be a team player and sacrificing stupid thoughts that never should have been there in the first place?
All these circles.
Endless cycles.
Life is brief.
Painful and beautiful at times.
Sometimes I wonder if the answer it to become more stoic, more denial...or just give up and start wandering around.
I wonder how/if any good I am able to be with and to others...
The hour is late and too many thoughts...too many what if's...too may regrets about wasted time...and the need to go beyond mere feelings of sentiment...to casting everything in with Jesus and just letting go of everything.
If I put my health, my loneliness, my desire for a mate, my fears, my failings, all of my relationships...all of these broken and painful things...if I set them on this alter like you want me to...will you be here to step into the void I will have?
If I finally begin to trust, ask me to do all in Scripture...will that mean I might feel your peace...your strength, your grace and glory?
So often I am not sure I can see myself...but I know You are here...please, please, please do not leave my side.
Do I at least get some sort of bonus points for trying to be a team player and sacrificing stupid thoughts that never should have been there in the first place?
All these circles.
Endless cycles.
Life is brief.
Painful and beautiful at times.
Sometimes I wonder if the answer it to become more stoic, more denial...or just give up and start wandering around.
I wonder how/if any good I am able to be with and to others...
The hour is late and too many thoughts...too many what if's...too may regrets about wasted time...and the need to go beyond mere feelings of sentiment...to casting everything in with Jesus and just letting go of everything.
If I put my health, my loneliness, my desire for a mate, my fears, my failings, all of my relationships...all of these broken and painful things...if I set them on this alter like you want me to...will you be here to step into the void I will have?
If I finally begin to trust, ask me to do all in Scripture...will that mean I might feel your peace...your strength, your grace and glory?
So often I am not sure I can see myself...but I know You are here...please, please, please do not leave my side.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Quote of the Day:
"So it seems God is OKAY with killing, but gets ticked if openly gay people are allowed to participate. Hard to imagine a more bizarre deity."
-Greg Boyd
-Greg Boyd
Broken Traffic Lights
Why do I care so much about little things that have no real value or meaning beside the petty and minute label I bestow upon them?
Why do I invest emotion and time into things that I know will wither, decay and be blown into the wind?
Why do I exhaust what little energy I have after being sick over something so temporal and fleeting?
Hope.
Faith.
Love.
Hope that despite the inward decay and pain, I will one day stand on distant shores.
Faith that the Love which has captivated me will follow through on every promise.
Love that is so weak and broken, but still I try to share.
The pain will never be avoidable as long as I am here.
I will stand.
It might seem absurd but even in my decay and pain, I refuse to quit.
Show me the frailty of my soul and the broken nature of my soul and I will smile.
The person who has lost everything is finally freed and capable of doing everything and anything.
I want to pretend I can be the apathetic bastard who shifts through life with no problem, using and discarding people left and right.
That isn't something I will choose.
The decay in my bones and taint in my blood will not make me betray that which I follow, the chivalry that demands I act.
Yes.
It's an inward struggle and battle.
But so is every important battle.
This heart is so weak, so small and dying.
But so capable of hope.
I will not quit.
But possibly I will fade.
Withdraw to heal.
Let the wounds be wrapped and soaked in hope.
So much time, all of it passing.
It will all be over soon.
Then I can go home.
No more pain, all the tears wiped away and love eternal.
Why do I invest emotion and time into things that I know will wither, decay and be blown into the wind?
Why do I exhaust what little energy I have after being sick over something so temporal and fleeting?
Hope.
Faith.
Love.
Hope that despite the inward decay and pain, I will one day stand on distant shores.
Faith that the Love which has captivated me will follow through on every promise.
Love that is so weak and broken, but still I try to share.
The pain will never be avoidable as long as I am here.
I will stand.
It might seem absurd but even in my decay and pain, I refuse to quit.
Show me the frailty of my soul and the broken nature of my soul and I will smile.
The person who has lost everything is finally freed and capable of doing everything and anything.
I want to pretend I can be the apathetic bastard who shifts through life with no problem, using and discarding people left and right.
That isn't something I will choose.
The decay in my bones and taint in my blood will not make me betray that which I follow, the chivalry that demands I act.
Yes.
It's an inward struggle and battle.
But so is every important battle.
This heart is so weak, so small and dying.
But so capable of hope.
I will not quit.
But possibly I will fade.
Withdraw to heal.
Let the wounds be wrapped and soaked in hope.
So much time, all of it passing.
It will all be over soon.
Then I can go home.
No more pain, all the tears wiped away and love eternal.
Quote of the Day:
"Believe me, Doctor, the place is impregnable!"
" Never cared much for the word 'impregnable.' Sounds a bit too much like 'unsinkable.'"
"What's wrong with unsinkable?"
"'Nothing,' as the iceberg said to the Titanic!"
" What?"
"Glub glub glub...."
-Exchange between The Brigadier and The Doctor
" Never cared much for the word 'impregnable.' Sounds a bit too much like 'unsinkable.'"
"What's wrong with unsinkable?"
"'Nothing,' as the iceberg said to the Titanic!"
" What?"
"Glub glub glub...."
-Exchange between The Brigadier and The Doctor
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