"Trying To Throw Your Arms Around the World" - U2

There is not enough time it seems...not enough...simply not enough...

Quote of the Day:

"I know the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started."
-Ernest Hemingway

You know...it's okay to not go into unnecessary icky details...

A Momentary Standstill

I wish I was better at dealing with these...awkward situations better...I never have the words, I never know what to say or do...

This isn't the end of the world...but why am I sulking like it is? Or like Jesus took away my favorite cookie?

Love...love...love...isn't it supposed to be the answer?
A way of covering over a multitude of sins?

I don't even know who I am much less who You are Lord...how am I supposed to help solve these problems?


I need to finish homework now but it's so freaking hard to focus...there is too much going on and it is so much easier to focus on the things that are wrong then it is to be responsible enough to take care of myself or school things...ack...

Reasonable Increasing Increments

All of the burning inside my mind
and the circular resonances
of life passing through my soul
is making an unexpected turn towards light.

Simple joys of conversation
and drinks of water in the sun
are making the days brighter indeed.

Quote of the Day:

"What do people mean when they say, "I am not afraid of God because I know He is good?" Have they never even been to a dentist?""
-C.S. Lewis

So much and so little at the same time.

Quote of the Day:

“What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.”
-Leo Tolstoy

Things to do 1-24-2010:

General:
(X)-Apologize for missing call and church

Game related:
(X)-Make post for Watchmen forum
(X)-Get stuff ready for Deadlands game tonight

School:
()-Memorize verses for Tuesday Theology
(x)-Do reading for Hermeneutics and Theology for Tuesday
(x)-Make prep outline for Thursday class discussion in New Testament

Sunday morning, how I dislike you.
Coming so early and attacking me with odd symptoms.

I hate that I overslept and miss the ride to church...there will be more chances and thankfully this was just the first time I've missed a possible church service. I hate how it sounds like I think of church as being nothing more than an obligation...because I honestly miss being involved as part of a family...it's just so many churches are less of families and more of a preying ground...uh no pun intended.

I'm working on killing my cynicism...I've never stopped the ministry work regardless of where I am...just because I don't openly preach at people doesn't mean that the gospel isn't being spread...if actions cannot show the validity of Jesus' love than no amount of words ever will. Actions are a better love letter than speaking until I am blue in the face...

I mean, the idea behind church is supposed to be this group of believers who realize the importance of the gospel and have been changed by the love of God...when a person mostly deals with people who are more focused on worshiping religion than learning how to love God and others...it can make for a frustrating and lonely experience.

But...life moves on...I think the most important thing is learning from the experience and not allowing the negative to control me...it's so easy to let myself shut down when I am hurt...even when it is joking jabs, if I don't trust the person or have been hurt I can just shut down and become a robot.

There is such a huge gap for misunderstanding that the fact Christianity has thrived for nearly two thousand years is part of the miracle...

I'm starting to loose some of my capacity of empathy for those who keep putting themselves in bad situations. =/

"A Grief Observed" - A Review, of Sorts

So I read C.S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed" in one sitting today. The only other book I have done that with in recent memory was Elie Wiesel's "Night".

I suppose there is enough common threads between the two for that to make sense...raw and undiluted visions of what it means to suffer, to loose one's world and to question God, to raise the questions shouted when it becomes darkest.

I've never seen such profound lost over love expressed in something that was real...there are so much romantic nonsense and Hollywood embellishments on the subject of love that to actually find such a sincere ache at having lost something so beautiful...it's like drinking frigid water...it quenches the thirst but more importantly awakens the soul to the arid environment that is so deprived of any semblance of understanding love.

I thought I possibly might have understood love but if love is this deep, this profound and so all consuming that to loose it is to loose yourself...than I have profoundly lied to those closest to me.

This is something...so profound, so beautiful and so disturbing at the same time. The majority of people must never love like this or marriage would be so much more respected and revered...as to opposed to being a meaningless laughingstock to most.

In a lot of ways I have sacrificed personal relationships out of fear...it's easier to think you love someone as infinite as God when you have no finite benchmark...instead all I have really been doing is running since I could choose to.

I want to know what it means to really love people...because I am afraid I've never really done that...I have a bad habit of running from most people once they reached certain level of closeness...and I have a developed habit that I have groomed for getting myself into utterly asinine situations.

Apathy is never a solution...but giving access to my inner most thoughts to...well even this blog...it's almost like it can act as a means of misdirections. "Yes, look at this horrible detail of my life so you will NOT see the big picture and the rampant hypocrisy that guides my every breath!"

So many questions...he asked so many questions in the book...none I have answers for. Most pressing are the ones concerning love and about what happens when one dies...what truly happens...answers nowhere to be found in the Bible or on this world.

I am forced to agree with Lewis' assertion that it is with a knowing and sympathetic ear God listens to this plea to know...but ultimately we can't process or understand it. These things are so much bigger...and powerful...

...sigh...I have so much more to think and write about but I must sleep...I'm getting myself worked into a hole of wanting isolation and to be away from people but the morning is early and there is church...so I'll be leaving this with a quote from the book.


** ** ** ** **

"The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is in this matter hardly less formidable than a Cosmic Sadist. The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed - might grow tired of his vile sport - might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety.

But supposed that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take you choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't.

Either way, we're for it.

What do people mean when they say, "I am not afraid of God because I know He is good?" Have they never even been to a dentist?"

If I am to speak I must be cleansed for I am a man of unclean lips, one who has never understood love and played at understanding the Divine...so much eternal beauty and with every breath I am forced to relearn the basics of my faith again.

Quote of the Day:

"I hate cynicism...it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen."
-Conan O'Brien

Fleeting Glimmers of Dying Reds on the Water

Tonight my heart is bleeding,
just falling apart for You.
It's now or never
failing or fallacy,
either pull me along
and let me live
or let the sun fade on this life.

At Your beauty I'm lost for words.

I can't give
I can't trade this away,
my soul is fading
while trapped in this dying machine
and all I have left
is nothing.

Let me fall on grace
for it's all I have left
as this dark night
slowly passes on,
seemingly to never end
as I wait praying.

The cornerstone of human failure is thinking we know what we want, one might think that I would have caught onto this by now but getting what I want is so often the stupidest thing I could have done.

Procured C.S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed" from the library five minutes before closing.

Apparently being able to cough up my lungs helps me have better timing.

Quote of the Day:

“Without friends the world is but a wilderness. There is no man that imparteth his joys to his friends, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his grieves to his friend, but he grieveth the less.”
-Francis Bacon

Being socially interactive is not quite as easy as some people might have you think.

Quote of the Day:

“Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.”
-Orson Scott Card

Quote of the Day:

“I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.”
-C.S. Lewis

Beauty Veiled in Pain

Perfection is lacking in the colors
as they fall like painted rain drops
moving in patterns
as echos of hope
make their way to your soul.

Hope eternal,
reflecting in everything
and faith that this kernel of love
with blossom
in this wasteland
and grow into full.

The death of hopelessness is near
and nearer still
growing as near as you are to me
with only pale distance in between
and as vivid as touching your hand
with the hope of never being released.

Everything we have strived
and hoped to hope for
with the death of pain.

Love, love given on a kiss to the breeze
as words grow and pain is realized
in ways so often untold.
Only this shred of perfection
expressed in Eternity can heal.

Believe, hope and breath
and regardless the distance
love can carry in this night
and through this sickness.

Breath and being made alive,
oh dear Muse
how can this ever be enough?

Returning Redundancy

...I am so lucky to be loved.
Even when I whine, cry and throw a temper-tantrum about being sick or in pain or social drama...the One who sang me into being still loves and holds me close...I can never understand how it works or the whys...but Love is its own reason...

I want to be more grateful and more helpful to those around me...and not just this negative downturn...but God it is so hard to focus on the positive when it feels like your insides are melting...but...I suppose Paul set the precedent of grace being more than sufficient...

It is just...is exhausting trying to be brave and that is why I have to use this blog as a verbal beating place to get out this negative in me...

I want perfection, I can feel the heartbeat of One so infinite and beautiful...and seeing the Hell we have made this world it hurts...it hurts to feel separation even though there is that renewed connection because of Jesus...

I'm so tired...and aching and just wish every thing could be made right and beautiful right now...that the ones I care about could feel Your love...I don't understand why You hide Your face and will not be seen...reveal Yourself...I am not enough and it is not like any of this was me anyway.

It's just You being nice enough to use a broken vessel...thanks...again, now and forever.

...and even more needless frustration...