To the Moon

Jacob

2012-01-25T22:14:00.000-08:00

Who was Jacob?
A twin. Heir of God's promise to Abraham. A deceptive cheat, both to his brother and his father, Isaac. Fearful for his life. Timidly obedient. (Gen. 25:19-28:5)

When he was traveling from his home to his uncle Laban, and he lay down under the stars with his head resting on a stone, he had a dream of a ladder extending from earth to heaven. Some people call it Jacob's ladder. The LORD (translated as his personal name) stood above it and said in the dream (paraphrased) "I am the LORD, the God of your fathers. I will give you and your children the land you lie on, and you will spread everywhere and be a blessing to the families of the earth. Behold, I'm with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I've done what I've promised."

Jacob responded with a startled awakening. He thought somehow he had missed the presence of the Lord in that place, but he felt it - the dream was so intense. And he was afraid. He memorialized that place in the middle of nowhere thinking "This is where God lives, and this is the gate to heaven", and he made a vow. He simply said, "If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear...so that I come back again in peace, then the Lord will be my God. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you."

I have to wonder if Jacob knew who he was speaking to; if he had ever contemplated very long the promise God made to Abraham, passed down to Isaac, and conferred to him. After all, he stole what wasn't his birthright. Had he ever thought about God's blessing people through his family? Was it even talked of or said in remembrance? I have to wonder when God says, "I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you." Jacob may not have realized Who met him in his dream. He may have correctly been afraid, if he thought of God as dwelling in some arid, holy place. But God knew what his plan was in "blessing all the families of the earth", even directly through Jacob. The one who didn't deserve his father's blessing. And so God met with him, his heavenly Father.

I identify with Jacob. I identify in the desire to self-protect and take. I admire his pragmatic assertion that he was very alone, with little to call his own, and he was definitely blameworthy. In true honesty he asked the Lord to be with him and keep him, provide bread and clothing, and restore peace in his home. He didn't ask for any more because he didn't deserve any more. But maybe he didn't know to ask for any more because he didn't know to whom he spoke. I think I have that problem sometimes, too. I wonder if Jacob ever thought back when he was older on God's promise not to leave him until He had done what he had promised him.

Why we're here.

2012-01-11T19:21:00.000-08:00

I have often puzzled over this verse. Gen. 1:27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." When I've heard people talk of it, it often sounds like guessing and it does lend to imagining, and probably more often then not I've heard people begin to reverse engineer what the 'image of God' must be. That is, because God is Spirit and in Genesis he's creating things from nothing, it is hard to imagine similarity with him. By default we seem to begin thinking of him in terms us and self-understanding. But that isn't right. That's not understanding him. "In our image" is...after us...emulating our character...desiring our relationship...where? on Earth. "Having dominion" and "multiplying".
1 Jn 3:2 says, "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." We don't know "what we will be" beyond the grave, but we will know the image of the invisible God when he appears, because we'll be like him. We'll see Jesus as he is. We were made in God's image to see Jesus.

John Calvin, "sacramental living".

2011-11-27T15:14:00.000-08:00

The sacraments, therefore, are exercises which make us more certain of the trustworthiness of God's Word. And because we are in the flesh, they are shown under things of flesh to instruct us according to our dull capacity, and lead us by the hand as tutors lead children.

Or as a contemporary Catholic author put it, "I don't partake [of the Eucharist] because I'm a good Catholic, holy and pious and sleek. I partake because I'm a bad Catholic, riddled by doubt and anxiety and anger; fainting from severe hypoglycemia of the soul."

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
Ps. 34:8

"For this reason I bow...

2011-10-23T06:41:00.000-07:00

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Ephesians 3:14-21

Spurgeon thoughts

2011-10-11T15:08:00.000-07:00

In whom do you now trust? Isa. 36:5
Reader, this is an important question. Listen to the Christian's answer, and see if it is yours. "In whom do you now trust?" "I trust," says the Christian, "in a triune God. I trust the Father, believing that He has chosen me from before the foundations of the world; I trust Him to provide for me in providence, to teach me to guide me, to correct me if need be, and to bring me home to His own house where there are many rooms. I trust the Son. He is very God of very God - the man Christ Jesus. I trust in Him to take away all my sins by His own sacrifice and to clothe me with His perfect righteousness. I trust Him to be my Intercessor, to present my prayers and desires before His Father's throne, and I trust Him to be my Advocate at the last great day, to plead my cause, and to justify me. I trust Him for what He is, for what He as done, and for what He has promised still to do. And I trust the Holy Spirit - He has begun to save me from my inbred sins; I trust Him to drive them all out; I trust Him to curb my temper, to subdue my will, to enlighten my understanding, to check my passions, to comfort my despondency, to help my weakness, to illuminate my darkness. I trust Him to dwell in me as my life, to reign in me as my King, to sanctify me completely, spirit, soul, and body, and then to take me up to dwell with the saints in light forever."

What blessed trust - to trust Him whose power will never be exhausted, whose love will never weaken, whose kindness will never change, whose faithfulness will never fail, whose wisdom will never be overruled, and whose perfect goodness can never be impaired! You are happy, reader, if this trust is yours! So trusting, you will enjoy sweet peace now and glory later, and the foundation of your trust will never be removed.

Who's in denial?

2011-08-22T10:28:00.000-07:00

11 Here is a trustworthy saying:
If we died with him,
we will also live with him;
12 if we endure,
we will also reign with him.
If we disown him,
he will also disown us;
13 if we are faithless,
he remains faithful,
for he cannot disown himself.

2 Timothy 2:13

We're inseparable from his infinite, good character. We are never NOT in relation to him. How do i know...? He became a man, "God with us." Ask, why? ...to grasp the wide and long and high and deep love of Christ, with the saints! There is something about God's personableness in sending His Son that helps each of us in the silence to see the Father. Jesus says this, "No one has ever seen God.The One and Only Son-the One who is at the Father's side-He has revealed Him." (Jn 1:18 Holman translation) BUT THEN, there is something about God's magnitude...His weight, His glory, that is comprehended being rooted and established with the saints. We need power and each other to even apprehend this love of Christ...and he is coming again. I imagine us standing together beholding this great faithfulness, this rapture, this Person we've always wanted to know.

The Baffling Call Of God 8/05

2011-08-05T08:36:00.000-07:00

“And all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished … And they understood none of these things.”
Luke 18:31,34
God called Jesus Christ to what seemed unmitigated disaster. Jesus Christ called His disciples to see Him put to death; He led every one of them to the place where their hearts were broken. Jesus Christ's life was an absolute failure from every standpoint but God's. But what seemed failure from man's standpoint was a tremendous triumph from God's, because God's purpose is never man's purpose.
There comes the baffling call of God in our lives also. The call of God can never be stated explicitly; it is implicit. The call of God is like the call of the sea, no one hears it but the one who has the nature of the sea in him. It cannot be stated definitely what the call of God is to, because His call is to be in comradeship with Himself for His own purposes, and the test is to believe that God knows what He is after. The things that happen do not happen by chance, they happen entirely in the decree of God. God is working out His purposes.
If we are in communion with God and recognize that He is taking us into His purposes, we shall no longer try to find out what His purposes are. As we go on in the Christian life it gets simpler, because we are less inclined to say - Now why did God allow this and that? Behind the whole thing lies the compelling of God. "There's a divinity that shapes our ends." A Christian is one who trusts the wits and the wisdom of God, and not his own wits. If we have a purpose of our own, it destroys the simplicity and the leisureliness which ought to characterize the children of God.

Sing

2011-04-03T09:45:00.000-07:00

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

Refrain:
Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
The saints’ and angels’ song.

When hoary time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

Verse 3 was penciled on the wall of a narrow room in an insane asylum by a man said to have been demented. The profound lines were discovered when they laid him in his coffin.
Frederick M. Lehman, 1917
v. 3 by Rabbi Mayer, 1096
v. 3 alt. by Anonymous/Unknown

Knowing the Father

2011-02-22T13:21:00.000-08:00

...to know everything and anyone else. I love this sermon. As soon as I can I'm going to write a narrative reaction.
http://sermons2.redeemer.com/sermons/knowing-father

Age

2011-02-17T10:53:00.000-08:00

A young heart but old soul is a conundrum, and as it turns out, difficult. But strangely irresistible!
"I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. ~Jesus

The Valley of Vision

2011-02-15T17:07:00.000-08:00

There's an incredible passage in Isaiah 22, called "An oracle concerning Jerusalem". I think it's both a historical/geographical commentary and allegory. What's catching is the language. It's as though God is speaking to people in that valley and to Himself and also in the third person of events that will pass. God says to people in the valley (paraphrased), "What are you doing...on the rooftops? You were thriving and 'exultant'. ...your people aren't dead in battle as you think. They fled and they were captured without a fight." [I wonder why they fled.] Then God says he can't be consoled. He's so grieved over the 'destruction of his people'. But 'the day' was appointed. The valley of vision was supposed to be thrown into a 'tumult'...and even trampled down. V.8 [Third person] "He has taken away the covering of Judah." WHY??? For reasons I kind of get and from a historical perspective...don't. God said, "You looked to your weapons and all your plans to protect yourself, but you didn't look to me. And I planned this long ago." He says, "I asked for 'weeping and mourning', for contrition, but you didn't hear. You didn't hear because you wanted to live as though tomorrow you were going to die." God says, "That's what you will pay for while you live." ...Does that not rattle you?
Then begins the more inscrutable verses. The oracle transissions from tangible people to something prophetic, but which I do get generally if it is in reference to the cross. God says, "go ask the 'steward' of the town or valley, what have you done here??? You've fortified yourself safely? on this height, in this rock above the neighboring valleys? 'The Lord will hurl you away violently. He will seize firm hold on you and whirl you around and around, and throw you like a ball into a wide land.' There you'll die, you shame of your master."
This is all leading to the oracle. God says, I'm going to put another man, Eliakim, in that man's office. That makes sense, a transfer of power, but then he says, "he's going to be a father to Jerusalem and Judah and I'm going to give him a key. 'He shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.' ...what? Who is Eliakim? The passage doesn't offer an explanation, but it does say that God determined to "fix him like a peg...on which the whole honor of his father's house and offspring and every small vessel, from the cups to all the flagons was to hang." That's some imagery to end with.... A jubilant valley, appointed chaos, inattention to God, a steward violently removed, and a man God determines to fix in place and hang every honor on. ...a peg isn't remarkable, but this peg bears the whole house, all the earthly possessions. Then in another appointed day, God says, 'the peg will give way. It will be cut down and fall, and everything on it will be cut off.' And that's the end of this perplexing passage.
I can imagine this valley and the bustle of a town and the fear of war. I can picture the panorama of seeing in a valley. I can kind of identify with the 'tumult' and uncertainty of God timing (what is He doing?). And I think I can even identify with the terror of God's warning to the steward. I don't understand the implications of lineage being cut off. But I do believe God fixed Jesus in place...made for a little while lower than the angels (Hebrews 2). It is Jesus we must see - the one who made himself nothing, a servant (Philippians 2) - at the center of that farsighted, encompassing vision.

O God of grace,
Thou has imputed my sin to my substitute,
and has imputed his righteous to my soul,
clothing me with a bridegroom's robe,
decking me with jewels of holiness.
But in my Christian walk I am still in rags;
my best prayers are stained with sin;
my penitential tears are so much impurity;
my confessions of wrong ar so many aggravations of sin;
my receiving the Spirit is tinctured with selfishness.
I need to repent of my repentance;
I need my tears to be washed;
I have no robe to bring to cover my sins,
no loom to weave my own righteousness;
I am always standing clothed in filthy garments,
and by grace am always receiving change of raiment,
for thou dost always justify the ungodly;
I am always going into the far country,
and always returning home a prodigal,
always saying, Father, forgive me,
and thou art always bringing for the best robe.
Every morning let me wear it,
every evening return in it,
go out to the day's work in it,
be married in it,
be wound in death in it,
stand before the great white throne in it,
enter heaven in it shining as the sun.
Grant me never to lose sight of
the exceeding sinfulness of sin,
the exceeding righteousness of salvation,
the exceeding glory of Christ,
the exceeding beauty of holiness,
the exceeding wonder of grace.

Discontentment

2011-02-09T11:57:00.000-08:00

I think I am a person prone to discontentment, particularly. I don't know why, and it's not very helpful to compare with others because that can be apples and oranges. Everyone has a fault. For some maybe it's complacency, for others little mercy, or maybe for others it's not boldly and honestly discerning righteousness, that is...if their first inclination is to "gray" the motives heart, rather than confess...because the heart is deceitful, period, than that person lies to himself. And I wonder how the truth is in him. James calls that worthless religion. For me, I think I've identified a "root", discontentment. I think it will kill me. I have to understand this, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

...there your heart will be also.

2011-02-04T21:55:00.000-08:00

I love that we're forgiven.

Oh, Dayton

2011-01-30T12:56:00.000-08:00

We used to wait. Arcade Fire interactive video

Morning 1/27

2011-01-26T10:23:00.000-08:00

And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. Jn. 1:16

These words tells us there is a fullness in Christ.
There is a fullness of essential Deity, for "in him the whole fullness of Deity dwells bodily." Col. 2:9
There is a fullness of perfect manhood, for in Him, bodily, that Godhead was revealed.
There is a fullness of atoning efficacy in His blood, for "the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin." 1 Jn 1:7
There is a fullness of justifying righteousness in His life, for "there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Rom. 8:1
There is a fullness of divine prevalence in His plea, for "He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them." Heb. 7:25
There is a fullness of victory in His death, for through death He destroyed him that had the power of death - that is, the devil.
There is a fullness of efficacy in His resurrection from the dead, for by it "he has caused us to be born again to a living hope." 1 Pet. 1:3
There is a fullness of grace to pardon, of grace to regenerate, of grace to sanctify, of grace to preserve, and of grace to perfect. There is a fullness at all times; a fullness of comfort in affliction, a fullness of guidance in prosperity. A fullness of every divine attribute - of wisdom, of power, of love; a fullness that is impossible to survey, much less to explore. "For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell." Col. 1:19 Oh, what a fullness must this be of which all receive! Fullness, indeed, must there be when the stream is always flowing, and yet the well springs up as free, as rich, as full as ever. Come, believer, and get all you need supplied; ask largely, and you will receive largely, for this "fullness is inexhaustible and is treasured up where all the needy may reach it, even in Jesus, Immanuel - God with us.

Spurgeon. Morning and Evening.

What to do about shyness

2011-01-06T20:06:00.000-08:00

What to do about shyness.

As editors and shyness researchers for What to Do About, we can only speculate. To be honest, we’re not certain what you’re problem is, BUT we’re going to do our best to spot it and loudly exclaim, “That’s it! That’s your god-forsaken problem! Look at you!” …So don’t cry, keep reading. We think there are a few conceivable remedies to your shyness.

A) never come out of your room. If you never come out of your room, you won’t ever know you’re shy because you’ll never meet people who stare at you and make you feel inferior or moronic, as you stare at your feet and pretend your all alone again. You are not inferior and there’s a good chance you’re not a moron. It is possible that you have some other kind of problem, social anxiety, OCD (which is also a personality disorder AND NOT simply an anxiety problem), and then there’s the assortment of phobias—rats, snakes, hermit crabs, loud noises, cops, drafts, the refrigerator, ceiling fan catastrophes. There’s no end to the possibilities and complexities of what you may suffer and imagine. BUT the good news is most well-meaning Americans have some kind of neurosis anyway. In fact, more Americans visit their haggard family physician for anxiety problems then they do the common cold. We here at What to Do About sit back in our seats amazed, but it’s true. Depending on the severity of your “normal” problem, you’re a statistic between 1% and 58% of the public. Those terrified the refrigerator will one day eat them comprise a smaller statistic than those returning from Iraq. The fact that people might think more of treating their worries than drinking white tea and eating berries before the croup gets them, does seem to indicate there’s company in numbers. You’ll be alright kid. And it should be said “shyness” is not a “disorder”. Back to your shyness, nobody cares until we have to get close and overcome uncomfortable silences. So stay in your room and you’ll never know the difference.

Option B is only slightly different than option A. You can decide. It is possible that it may also exacerbate a mental disorder. People who choose this option are generally pathological liars and you can be one too. What you have to do is become someone you are not. Lie to yourself over and over. Don’t stop lying to yourself until you have a nice, polished alter ego. This is what you show to everybody and tell everybody you are, that is, not shy. This raises the question of who/what our identity in fact is, also what is multiple personality disorder, but we say who cares. Denying a shy proclivity is not accepting you might be ok and there are still options C and D.

Option C …we hesitate to recommend and we will immediately follow it with option D, so keep reading. You might even read this one super fast. One proven way of eliminating shyness forever, if that’s what you’re bound and determined to do, is kill yourself. Now, there’s a lot of reasons to live before your loved one’s find your note saying, “I’m sorry I was shy.” In fact, I personally want you to know that in a way, I enjoy shy people. There’s a lot to discover, which leads me directly and very rapidly into option D.

Option D. Why are you shy? (We’re getting to the option.) Why do you think being shy is a problem? People (good, normal people) probably don’t think less of you. Maybe you’re misunderstood. All that means is that you have to practice feeling less critical…of the whole environment. Literally practice mentally relaxing. Trust people, and give them something to know about you. People aren’t always good at finding that—at learning about other people, or you. The other important note is that you can’t care too much what they do with that information. You must have some esteem for yourself. You’re very interesting. I like you and I’m only imagining you. You’re brunette, 5’7’’, have green eyes, are perfectly shaped, and female. Yes?

To not be shy, to enjoy you, to get to know others, you must be about things bigger than you. In relationships, if you’re too concerned with your shyness, knowingly or not, you’re probably going to miss why it’s a desirable relationship, or not. You’re probably going to miss things about that person because you’re worried with how they view you. There is an existent and hazy line that separates concern for others’ opinion and your own social graces. Don’t be afraid. Focus on being “about” the other person, learning about them, paying attention to who they are and how they respond. Listen and you’ll probably overcome a bit of shyness. So, come out of your room. Please don’t pretend. Don’t kill yourself. That’s a true tragedy. And confidently and humbly tell someone why you’re so interesting.

you give me life

2010-10-28T21:08:00.000-07:00

The world suddenly seems a possible place when someone saves you.

Teardrop

2010-10-27T17:25:00.000-07:00

Piano

2010-10-27T11:53:00.000-07:00

I love the piano. It makes me want to take a music theory class. Because I only have one innate art talent, writing - perhaps, I can try to describe it, but I can't play. Oh, I wish! There is never enough time. The piano takes your body and soul across "keyscapes" the way a drummer bounces between cracked timbres. He practically is the sound. Watching him make music is like imagining the piano's rippling chords. You hear it and are gone to a memory or a picture.

Tiny epiphanies: getting a grip.

2010-10-25T23:21:00.000-07:00

I'm beginning to understand why I can't sleep. I'm anxious. And the only reason I'm anxious is because I'm not doing all that I need to do. That is simply because I'm not managing the time to do it satisfactorily. And I'm not doing that because I'd rather be distracted. This then is a problem of not knowing how to enjoy what must be done. Ignorance must be bliss because it's irresponsible.

God's Big thinkers

2010-10-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

'Tis certain with me that the world exists anew every moment, that the existence of things every moment ceases and is every moment renewed. For instance, in the existence of bodies, for there to be resistance, or tendency to some place; 'tis not numerically the same resistance that exists the next moment, 'tis evident, because this existence may be in different places. But yet this existence is continued so far, that there is respect had to it in all the future existences; 'tis evident in all things continually. Now past existence can't be continued so that respect should be had to it, otherwise than mentally. If the world this moment should be annihilated, so that nothing should really and actually exist any more; the existence of the world could not be continued so that, if another world after a time should be created, that world should exist after this or that manner from respect to the manner of the existence of this, or should be so only because this had been thus or thus. Indeed, we every moment see the same proof of a God as we should have seen, if we had seen [him] create the world at first. Revelation 4:11, "For thy pleasure they are and were created." ~Jonathan Edwards, Miscellanies No. 125

I believe Edwards was contemplating the eternality of God as immanent in creation. He describes this in relation to time and space in the way we talk about “never stepping into the same river twice”. A river body remains and is identifiable “in different places” but it isn’t the same physically or molecularly or in “resistance” in time. Then I think Edwards is talking about the passage of time. “But yet this existence is continued so far, that there is respect had to it in all the future existences; 'tis evident in all things continually.” Here perhaps it’s helpful to think of how we look at one river and think of it’s origin in the mountains (the past) and how we know we where this same river is going (in the future) to a delta or another river. But then Edwards changes the paradigm for the reason to contemplate time and space—creation or a river. “Now past existence can't be continued so that respect should be had to it, otherwise than mentally.” He’s saying the past (origins) can’t exist simply to reflect on. The river isn’t just a river. Why is it there? Then he conjectures about the reason for the world’s existence. Why should some prior existence or time be the template for a future? Or why should a future time and world exist in the manner of a former? There is NO reason other than God has pleased to order the creation as we perceive it in time, with our senses, as it is displayed. We know the world won’t go forever. It draws us to wonder into His eternity, which beats in the present moment. He makes all things hold together because He is immanent in creation. This reminds me of two things A.W. Tozer said. "The value of the cleansed imagination in the sphere of religion lies in its power to perceive in natural things shadows of things spiritual. It enables the reverent man to "See the World in a grain of sand, and eternity in an hour." And, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. ...Thought and speech are God's gifts to creatures made in His image; these are intimately associated with Him and impossible apart from Him.” (Born After Midnight. Knowledge of the Holy.)

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." ~Chesterton

Because Jesus is alive

2010-10-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

I am capable of great decisions because Jesus is alive. The truth will be no different, regardless if I feel condemned or I am too proud. God is not God and he does not love me, if he only imputes righteousness to me. He will make me lie down in green pastures and lead me beside still waters for his name's sake. The world can turn around me but I'll be growing into an oak. I'll be an olive tree in the temple. Because I am not new. I have a story, but God gives me a heart and mind which can be renewed. So, I imagine there will be sorrows still, but I believe in the man walking the Emmaus road. My mind is awake and my heart burns in me.

Sex in the city

2010-10-17T00:38:00.000-07:00

I deeply appreciate my pastor's desire to communicate a godly view of sex and who we are as people. This is the 3rd of three sermons on that. If you listen, pay close attention to his reference to Augustine, one of the greatest theologians (and ostensibly a sex addict), and Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate. Augustine, and any believer who tells of the weight of his sin, knew God's doctrine of "unmerited grace", and Jerome, alone in the desert, realized no self-imposed rule, no effort of his own, undid his impurity. In Colossians 2, Paul says, "These rules seem like wisdom, but they won't work...because 'you' (people) thought of them. They're even an effort in false humility. Nothing can restrain sensual indulgence." EXCEPT, a turning from sin and turning to turning to Christ. v. 13 "When you were dead in your sins...God made you alive with Christ." This is the mystery Paul says he labors for, "struggling with all His energy, which so powerfully works in me." This is knowing Christ and having fellowship with the Father and their Spirit. Their spirit is so convicting, arresting, and transforming that it consumes a person with desires inseparable from the world, but not worldly. A Christian cries to be sanctified.

Amazingly, I was listening to John Piper preach a sermon called, Battling the Unbelief of Lust. He references the exact same texts in Matt 22:34-40 and 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8. Jesus says in Matthew, the greatest commandments are to love God with everything in you and then love your neighbor as you yourself. Thessalonians 4:4 is saying, "be holy and honorable". Why? because you know God and the will of God. The will of God is sanctification, which in marriage, is explicitly tied to sex. That's why Piper thinks the RSV most aptly says, "that each one of you know how to take a wife...." BUT whether that or "control his own body" isn't the final point, not everyone marries. The final point is that knowing God, loving Him with your very self, is demonstrated in a holy and honorable love for your neighbor. Lust, which cannot be bridled apart from its replacement with a greater affection, a desire for God, is akin to rejecting God and his sanctification. (He makes us holy so we can be honorable.) It's a denial of the Holy Spirit (v.8) to renew what can't regenerate. It is unbelief. It is powerless despondence. To me, that's when there is no more mystery in the world or hope within me. Worldly indulgence is all can I see.

Sexuality and spirituality are not, of course, exactly the same thing. They are not identical twins, but they are kissing cousins... The fact is that sex is the closest that many people ever come to a spiritual experience. Indeed, it is because it is a spiritual experience of sorts that so many chase after it with a repetitive, desperate kind of abandon. Often, whether they know it or not, they are searching for God. ~M. Scott Peck

pickle

2010-10-16T14:00:00.001-07:00

The gods must be crazy

2010-10-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

was a movie done in 1980.

It's about a coke bottle that drops from the sky and a Botswana man finds it. it becomes the novelty and village vice so he tries to get rid of it. I don't remember the rest of the comedy. I thought it was a dumb movie, but my whole family raves about it. It's been so long ago that I watched that I might give it another chance. The only reason this title (The Gods Must Be Crazy) comes to mind is because gods is in the title, which then leads me to the quote.

"we're bad artists...and proud of it. humility is a brand new idea."

that's me on 'being the gods of our own lives'. still don't see it? don't worry. ...we make much of ourselves and where we're going or where we've been. we think we're art and lovely little creators. we are too...but black ones. we have egos and sin that distort the whole image self-image. "sin is the new black," our pride of life. It's in vanity and blindness. because there is no righteousness.

now that i think of it, this title is perfect. :)

HibOO d'Scène : Mumford & Sons "Sigh No More" (live @ la Maroquinerie, P...

2010-10-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

the church, Christ-followers, the world, Jesus

2010-10-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

Does the church act triumphalistically, or treat its people arrogantly? Is it an agent for the suppression of human needs and aspirations? Does it foster intolerance and small-mindedness? Does the church proclaim a gospel of success and offer Jesus as a better business partner? Does it encourage an ethos of prosperity
to the neglect of the earth’s good, or an individualistic spirituality to the neglect of the world’s needy? Are its leaders corrupt and coercive? Such distortions of Christianity can find no harsher critic, no more radical rejecter, than the Jesus found only in the pages of the New Testament, the Jesus who was himself emptied out for others and called his followers to do the same. The Jesus to whom Saint Francis of Assisi appealed in his call for a poor and giving rather than a powerful and grasping church was not the Historical Jesus but the Jesus of the Gospels. One must only wonder why this Jesus is not also the “real Jesus” for those who declare a desire for religious truth, and theological integrity,
and honest history.
~Luke Timothy Johnson

neighbors in the weight of glory

2010-10-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

How does it work, how does it look to think "you never talk to a mere mortal"? What kind of conversation happens?

"Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"
He [Jesus] said to him [the lawyer], "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?"
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself."
"You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live."
But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"
And Jesus replied, telling the story of the good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite, and the traveler who was robbed and left for dead.
v. 36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? He [the lawyer] said, "The one who showed him mercy." And Jesus said to him, "You go, and do likewise."

The lawyer was probably thinking to Jesus' concise answer, "Just a minute! You're going too fast here, Jesus. We haven't defined our terms yet. And you know what happens if we don't define things properly. What if I rush out and love somebody, only to find that he isn't my neighbor? The parable and command, are as if Jesus were saying, "Stop theorizing, please; stop your discussions; just go and obey. Whoever is in need is your neighbor, and to meet his need as best you can is to love him."

"In the case of the man who was born blind (see Mark 8:22-26), Jesus healed him by touching him twice. The first time the man saw people like trees walking around, and the second time he saw clearly. Most of us are like that. To see people as Jesus sees them, we need a second touch. We've had one touch from God and we see people like trees. Trees are good for shade, for wood, for fruit; they are useful to us. But it's not until we are touched a second time that "tree" people (who may be useful to us) become people for whom we can be of some use.

"Of course, that begs a question; Jesus isn't here in the flesh anymore. We can't run to Him literally and say, 'Put spit upon my eyes and help me see.' How do we get the second touch?

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.... There are not ordinary people. You have never talked with a mere mortal.... But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.... Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.

" " taken from The Weight of Glory, Loving God With All You've Got, and Luke 10.

Morning Eph 1:1

2010-08-02T06:13:00.000-07:00

"Our belief in God's wisdom supposes and necessitates that He has a settled purpose and plan in the work of salvation. In every bone, joint, and muscle, sinew, gland and blood-vessell, you see the presence of God working everything according to the design of infinite wisdom. And will God be present in creation, ruling over it, but not in grace? ...We know that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without our Father. Even the hairs of your head are all numbered. God weighs the mountains of our grief in scales, and the hills of our tribulations in balances. ...And shall there be a God in providence and not in grace?

No; He knows the end from the beginning. He sees in its appointed place not merely the cornerstone that He has laid in fair colors, in the blood of His dear Son, but He sees each of the chosen stones taken out of the quarry of nature, placed in their ordained position, and polished by His Grace. He sees the whole from corner to cornice from base to roof, from foundation to pinnacle. In His mind he has a clear knowledge of every stone that will be put in its prepared space, and how vast the structure will be when the capstone is set in place with shouts of "Grace! Grace!" In the end it will be clearly seen that in every child of God, Jehovah did as he planned with His own; and in every part of the work of grace He accomplished His purpose and glorified His own name."
~Spurgeon

Derek Webb- Jena and Jimmy

2010-08-01T19:55:00.000-07:00

Morning and Evening

2010-07-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

"If you would enjoy the eminent grace of the full assurance of faith, under the blessed Spirit's influence and assistance, do what the Scripture tells you: "Make every effort." Take care that your faith is the right kind - that it is not mere belief of doctrine, but a simple faith, depending on Christ and on Christ alone. Pay careful attention to your courage. Plead with God that He would give you the face of a lion, that you may, with a consciousness of right, go on boldly. Study the Scriptures diligently and get knowledge; for a knowledge of doctrine will help a great deal to confirm faith. Try to understand God's Word; let it dwell in your heart richly.

When you have done this, add to your "knowledge...self-control." Pay attention to your body and soul. Be controlled in speech, life, heart, and thought. Add to this, by God's Holy Spirit, patience; ask Him to give you that patience that endures affliction, which, when it is tried, will come forth as gold. Array yourself with patience, so that you do not murmur or be depressed in your afflictions. When that grace is won, look to godliness. Godliness is something more than religion. Make God's glory your object in life; live in His sight; dwell close to Him; seek fellowship with Him; then you will have "godliness"; and to that add brotherly love. Have a love for all the saints: And add to that a charity that opens its arms to all men and loves their souls. When you are adorned with these jewels, and just in proportion as you practice these heavenly virtues, you will come to know by clearest evidence "your calling and election." "Make every effort," if you would get assurance, for lukewarmness and doubting very naturally go hand in hand.

When I grow up, I want to be like A.W. Tozer

2010-05-31T11:36:00.000-07:00

"The value of the cleansed imagination in the sphere of religion lies in its power to perceive in natural things shadows of things spiritual. It enables the reverent man to "See the World in a grain of sand, and eternity in an hour." The weakness of the Pharisee in days of old was his lack of imagination, or what amounted to the same thing, his refusal to let it enter the field of religion. He saw the text with its carefully guarded theological definition and he saw nothing beyond. ...I long to see the imagination released from its prison and given to its proper place among the sons of the new creation. What I am trying to describe here is the sacred gift of seeing, the ability to peer beyond the veil and gaze with astonished wonder upon the beauties and mysteries of things holy and eternal. The stodgy pedestrian mind does no credit to Christianity."
(from Born after Midnight)

Order created. God and Sex.

2010-04-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

If you've ever thought sex is an appetite, a basic need to be met, or that it's more than an appetite. It's a connection we don't know how to think about, except for babies or a euphoria; perhaps hear this talk.

What to do about watching lively, vocal, mischievous kids:

2010-01-13T11:25:00.000-08:00

I admit, I don’t spend a lot of time around children. This is not because I dislike children, but simply that I don’t have kids and live with two other bachelors…a bachelor kind of life. So, in the rare event that I’m called on to look after someone else’s children, I have noticed a few things. For example, I noticed that kids don’t come together to do things kids do with ideas of concession, or communicativeness. In fact, most kids have no concept of those words. So for example, in last night’s adventures I watched this: two children, for reasons I can’t begin to guess, find it hilarious to promptly disappear and lock themselves in a side classroom where they think moving every object in the room—desks, chairs, and cabinet—into a piled mass against the door is hands-down the funniest thing ever. This somehow happened in less than five minutes, and both these children are about five. I wondered, as I stood in the middle of the other children, trying to sort their ideas of doing something together, that is, each child yelling his want, ‘how is it those two five year olds find so much glee in completely dismantling a room?’ I remembered being six, when we lived overseas, and in some kind of insanity, delighting in turning on every faucet I found on the complex. Perhaps I do get it.

While the five year olds crept under Rubbermaid bins across the gymnasium floor, I tried to make sense of the best way to put the older children in order. Mind you, the oldest was ten, but he at least took verbal interest in the peacekeeping negotiations. He blustered and hedged and implored me, but smirked when I appealed to his conscience. We had a good time. The other children, on the other, were basically in their own worlds. I had forgotten that children apparently notice that a bigger person is in the room and there to take care of them, but don’t know why he talks. I quickly realized I was not there to keep the peace only or be considerate or ask for consensus. I was there to preside over the squabbling and tell them what we were then going to do. So, we decided 30 minutes of kickball was agreeable, then 15 minutes of football (3 on 3 with the only girl, who was 5, being all-time defense), and finally finishing the evening with a frenzied game of soccer. Soccer as a mixed group of seven children under ten imagine soccer, not goalies and passing. Owing…I’ll guess, to the private “me centered” mentalities of being small and vocal, and great dissatisfaction with the referee calls (I was the referee), the kickball game ran a bit over and there wasn’t time for soccer. No one seemed too disappointed though that we weren’t able to come together on everything. I guess it makes sense to them…. So, smiling I delivered nine cockamamie kids to their very experienced parents and thought driving home, I should try to write about this.

What to do about lively, vocal, mischievous kids? Well, know at least two 5 year olds will probably disappear. Group activity I guess doesn’t make sense to kids. If you’re watching siblings…they’re probably not going to share or be nice. In fact, they’re probably going to behave like little enemies and decry each other. Be certain to step into the biggest person in the room role, as children don’t make up their minds. Some amount of consideration for their little opinions goes a long way though. I thought it so amusing how despite being the “bad ref”, making the “bad calls”, kids are glad you’re there. They don’t know what they like about you, but they do like you. So, be present, be considerate, and be firm. Don’t be overwhelmed. You were a kid too, remember?

I stole from my roommate.

2010-01-11T11:28:00.000-08:00

I owe this summary to Tim Mallon's notes. I'm posting here because I put things here I want to remember. That's it. I don't think it's thievery...considering it's the Bible.

The key to controlling your body (and not letting it control you) is the Holy Spirit. Walking in the Spirit. (Gal 5:16-17) The key to walking in the Spirit is being filled by the Spirit. (Eph 5:17-18). The key to being filled by the Spirit is letting the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. (Col 3:16) The key to letting the Word of Christ dwell in you richly is hiding the Word in your heart that you may not sin. (Psalm 119)

Things to more than remember

2009-08-27T06:01:00.000-07:00

"Every time you experience something good and instead of being deeply grateful you take it for granted as if you deserve it, you are putting a mark on your soul... you are on the way to self-pity and resentment."
Tim Keller

what's going on?

2009-08-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

this song is great, loud.

citychurcheast

2009-08-20T06:44:00.000-07:00

An excellent sermon from Craig Brown on Hebrews 13. "Keep on loving each other as brothers...strangers, prisoners, the mistreated. Don't defile the marriage bed and keep your lives free from the love money. ...because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."

i will extol the Lord at all times.

2009-08-19T08:14:00.000-07:00

"There is a danger to you, a dimension to complex for the finite mind, an ocean to deep to be explored. This danger is your allowance for my grief and suffering. It is a crushing that breaks the bones of my faith and I'm cast down. And here there is a choice to make - to bless you or to curse you. To curse you would be to deny that there is any good in you at all. To believe that you have abandoned me in this violent human experience, and that you will never come back to claim me. To hate you for leaving me here, helpless and alone. But to bless you is to believe that, though you are not safe, you are good, completely good. And to bless you is to live surrendered to that which I don't understand about you. To walk, not run, and to trust. To open all my senses to you God. And to let wonder and awe heal all my wounds and restore my hope. And then to join the Psalmist, who said, "I will extol the Lord at all times, and his praise will be upon my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord, so let the afflicted rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt his name together."
~Jon Shirley
Ps. 34 king David

Today

2009-07-28T10:11:00.001-07:00

Rainy day

Yesterday

2009-07-28T10:09:00.001-07:00

Testing mms

2009-07-25T14:29:00.001-07:00

relationships with books...
"we read to know we're not alone." ~ Shadowlands
we write to communicate we don't want to be alone. ~ me

i believe like a child

2009-07-14T07:32:00.001-07:00

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened. [The Brothers Karamazon, Chapter 34.]

today's choice " "

2009-04-13T06:58:00.000-07:00

"Let a man become convinced that nothin can harm him and instantly for him all fear goes out of the universe. The nervous reflex, the natural revulsion to physical pain may be felt sometimes, but the deep torment of fear is gone forever. God is love and God is sovereign. His love disposes Him to desire our everlasting welfare and His sovereignty enables Him to secure it. Nothing can hurt a good man." ~A.W. Tozer

the prince

2009-04-12T08:05:00.000-07:00

"When I survey the wonderous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain i count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride."

analogies

2009-03-29T13:16:00.000-07:00

Love found me. When i didn't see it. When i didn't feel it. When it was a concept and i was a cognition. i was a waif, a heady wanderer. Time rolled on, ticking through dark hours, and i soldiered on too. i crossed planes and do you know? the darkness over those interminable spaces passed. i can see them, that dense...immense horizon, not far behind. But i think i crossed over. In hindsight it seems momentary, as if that dark line vanished to a point, and then that was gone too. But i know it was dark... i was down trodden, grieving...practically blind. That darkness is right over there. it's terrifying, enveloping, but I can see it. Now i think i've walked onto a different set. There's a framework and a theme and vigor keenly known. It's as though i'm on stage and a different script renews me. The story is called "Love". i hope you see it. Then come join me.

The Prodigal God

2009-02-18T21:01:00.000-08:00

"In his book The Four Loves, Lewis wrote a striking meditation on his [friend Charles Williams'] death in an essay entitled 'Friendship.'
In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles [Williams] is dead, I shall never again see Ronald's [Tolkien's] reaction to a specifically Charles joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him "to myself" now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald . . . In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each of us has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying "Holy, Holy, Holy" to one another (Isaiah 6:3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall have.

"Lewis is saying that it took a community to know an individual. How much more would this be true of Jesus Christ? Christians commonly say they want a relationship with Jesus, that they want to 'get to know Jesus better.' You will never be able to do that by yourself. You must be deeply involved in the church, in the Christian community, with strong relationships of love and accountability. Only if you are part of a community of believers seeking to resemble, serve, and love Jesus will you ever get to know him and grow into his likeness." (Tim Keller, The Prodigal God, pp. 126-127)

from a book i'm reading

2009-02-09T08:49:00.000-08:00

A.W. Tozer Knowledge of the Holy
the Why:
"Thou, O Christ, who wert tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin, makes us strong to overcome the desire to be wise and to be reputed wise by others as ignorant as ourselves. We turn from our wisdom as well as from our folly and flee to Thee, the wisdom of God and the power of God. Amen."

Because:
"God knows instantly and effortlessly all matter and all matters, all mind and ever mind, all spirit and all spirits, all being and every being, all creaturehood and all creatures, ever plurality and all pluralities, all law and every law, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret, all thrones and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven, and hell."

you and me:
"What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. ...Thought and speech are God's gifts to creatures made in His image; these are intimately associated wit Him and impossible apart from Him. It is highly significant that the first word was the Word: 'And the Word was with God and the Word was God.' We may speak because God spoke. In Him word and idea are indivisible."

read

2009-01-30T10:14:00.000-08:00

read today's My Utmost for His Highest entry. 1/30 there's a feed tab on the links list, bottom, right.

i don't believe this. but i'm not married. therefore it's hilarious.

2009-01-16T08:58:00.000-08:00

JERRY: I had a very interesting lunch with George Costanza today.
KRAMER: Really?
JERRY: We were talking about our lives and we both kind of realized we're kids. We're not men.
KRAMER: So, then you asked yourselves, "Isn't there something more to life?"
JERRY: Yes. We did.
KRAMER: Yeah, well, let me clue you in on something. There isn't.
JERRY: There isn't?

KRAMER: Absolutely not. I mean, what are you thinking about, jerry? Marriage? Family?
JERRY: Well...
KRAMER: They're prisons. Man made prisons. You're doing time. You get up in the morning. She's there. You go to sleep at night. She's there. It's like you gotta ask permission to use the bathroom. Is it all right if I use the bathroom now?
JERRY: Really?
KRAMER: Yeah, and you can forget about watching TV while you're eating.
JERRY: I can?
KRAMER: Oh, yeah. You know why? Because it's dinner time. And you know what you do at dinner?
JERRY: What?
KRAMER: You talk about your day. How was your day today? Did you have a good day today or a bad day today? Well, what kind of day was it? Well, I don't know. How about you? How was your day?

JERRY: Boy.
KRAMER: It's sad , Jerry. It's a sad state of affairs..
JERRY: I'm glad we had this talk.
KRAMER: Oh, you have no idea.

2009-01-11T07:24:00.000-08:00

You know how the gates of Zion will always stand open and men and kings will bring the wealth of nations to it? You know how Lebanon will send its conifers and royal breasts will nurse her [Zion]? no, i don't totally understand that... :) And you know how the wealth of the seas will come and the riches of nations and so many will assemble and come? I think my heart will throb and swell with joy. I think that Samuel Smith of Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, England might be there too bearing his oatmeal stout to present to the King. It is that grand. ...apparently the oats and extra malt make it so rich in proteins and lipids that it was proscribed to nursing mothers in the 1800s too.
Isaiah 60, Revelation 21

for love is of God. everyone who loves...

2009-01-06T18:07:00.000-08:00

these are simple, life directing thoughts.

I don't know when I first verbalized "I love Jesus." I do remember having difficulting with those words for a long time. It's a serious thing-to love someone. Often, I think, if we spend even a fraction of time thinking about "how it is that I love so and so", "what is it that I love so much?" we end up with a short list of mannerisms, or experiences we've shared, or even perhaps how that person makes us...us. (that funny thing you do. how relaxed and pleasant conversation is.)

Somehow these things mean "I love..." whoever it is. I suppose that's mostly love, but I don't think it's all of it. In fact, the most arresting and bewitching part of it might be the most difficult to describe. It's a declaration. To some degree I love you because you love me, and vice versa simply because we say so. That seems kind of remarkable...choosing someone with our words, which is different than irresistible emotions and fond experiences. Words are permanent...never fully recanted. People change for better and for worse, but their words and deeds tell the whole story, regardless of the person's intentions. Words name things: husband, wife, God, truth, work, rest, what I do, who I am. The senses are more fragile, fragmented sentences, vanishing thoughts, winds blowing in the body.

I wonder how often people are afraid to trust their words. I have been afraid. I didn't understand them. "I love Jesus"?? How do you love someone in history? What does that mean?

Well, firstly, it means to believe that "love comes from God." Everything we do and feel is love...is a peripheral experience of the center. "God is love." He defines it.
Then, "This is how God showed his love...He sent his one and only Son into the world..." Again, it's declarative. Believe it or reject it.
But "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son...."
Why? "that we might live through him." Are we not alive if we do not believe that love is of God? That Jesus' coming is how we know what love is? No. No, we're the living dead. Dead in our sins, and only sometimes sensing that God is the center and we are somewhere in orbiting space. Living?

Remember. He [Jesus] rose from the dead. History doesn't contain him. He loves us and gave himself for us. He intercedes on our behalf right now. He sent his Spirit and went back to heaven so that while we wait for his return, we begin to understand God the Father's will. Aside from God being the only existent Being who's reason for existing is in Himself, there are not simple answers for what the will of God is. He and his reasons are perfect. But it is true that because Jesus died, was buried, and rose again I can know him and love him. God wants to bring me into love for Himself..."to glorify and and enjoy Him forever", as the catechism declares.

"We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. [The Holy Spirit. The spirit of love that is between the Father and the Son.] And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us."

keywords: seen and testify. We agree with what God has done and declared. acknowledges. We not only feebly declare with our words, but also we bend to the truth. know and rely. God's words are more trustworthy than mine. I can trust them. ...perhaps this is why we "solemnly swear to tell the whole truth, so help me God."

verses referenced are from 1 John 4:7-16

Paul

2008-12-20T16:38:00.000-08:00

...So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God - even as I try to please everybody in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1

Why do you think Paul says to follow his example? as if he knows how to live...
Ans: Because people see us and hear us and sense us. If they don't believe and trust in Jesus, he's nothing more than a name, a character in history. But they see us.

Do you know what you love? That is what I see.
You must know whom it is I love.

midnight disease...perhaps

2008-11-27T22:33:00.000-08:00

it's 1:30am here in ohio. tonight is not normal, in that it happens often, but i'm also very familiar. tomorrow morning i'll be too groggy. right now i'm almost too pressed - pressed with thoughts that are too fast and without order. it's difficult to describe. there are too many words but i have such dulled senses. i'm tired. perhaps i can recall some of these things in the morning if i write a little.

i love some conversations that say very little. the kind where you needn't say much because these conversations are simply enjoying time being together. there's not many of them because so often we're "doing" things together. but sometimes we get past formalities and so enjoy familiarity. i enjoy listening to music in the car and not talking.

i want to be a selfless egoist

2008-11-15T07:26:00.000-08:00

i want to be a selfless egoist. i think that's basically impossible. ...unless, we live in a created world. unless, God's world is somehow different then the varied scientific and sensory frameworks we think in. unless, God's Son reveals him. (Matt. 11:27) And if Jesus is the "Word became flesh"...then the Bible must somehow define today and living. It is after all the most transcribed book ever. In fact, somehow in God's time and world, a single person, in his time and place, is important only in respect to the person of Jesus, who isn't dead. That's how the Bible "speaks" today and how the Holy Spirit teaches and enables. Don't you think that's remarkable?

read John 16:5-16

Everyone is prideful. Everyone has an ego. How is it possible to possibly have an ego and not be self-centered? I think it begins in death. Give up a "self", not in blindness, not thoughtlessly. in humility. You're too finely created. selflessness is impossible without that kind of epistemology. in some ways we're dead already. time is marching on. In that kind of recognition, we come to understand that we are here solely to be changed. A "selfless egoist", I imagine, is a person who can live for others because he doesn't want to live for himself. For me those are good intentions that are very slowly taking form. But for Jesus, it is why he came, to do the will of his Father. Jesus said literally, "Because I live, you also will live." Jn 14:19b He also said, "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me, will find it." Matt 16:25 In this...evolution...we can begin to discern what God's good, pleasing, and perfect will is. Roman 12:2 God's glory is the epitome of purpose. He glorifies himself and there is no greater glory. ...be aligned with that Ego, and irony will follow.

Remember: "It is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves...."
Eph 2:8-10

Father Brown

2008-11-08T12:43:00.000-08:00

Science is a grand thing when you can get it; in its real sense one of the grandest words in the world. But what do these men mean, nine times out of ten, when they use it nowadays? When they say detection is a science? When they say criminology is a science? They mean getting outside a man and studying him as if he were a gigantic insect; in what they would call a dry impartial light; in what I should call a dead and dehumanized light. They mean getting a long way off him, as if he were a distant prehistoric monster; staring at the shape of his "criminal skull" as if it were a sort of eerie growth, like the horn on a rhinoceros's nose. When the scientist talks about a type, he never means himself, but always his neighbour; probably his poorer neighbour. I don't deny the dry light may sometimes do good; though in one sense it's the very reverse of science. So far from being knowledge, it's actually suppression of what we know. It's treating a friend as a stranger, and pretending that something familiar is really remote and mysterious. It's like saying that a man has a proboscis between the eyes, or that he falls down in a fit of insensibility once every twenty-four hours. Well, what you call "the secret" is exactly the opposite. I don't try to get outside the man. I try to get inside.
G.K. Chesterton

principle

2008-11-08T06:33:00.000-08:00

"Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway."
~Wisdom (Prov 8:34)

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."
~James 1:17

maxims

2008-11-07T19:37:00.000-08:00

"I will not want what I cannot have."
~jared owens

o man o man o man. where are you woman?

2008-11-02T09:51:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting reading an ironically fascinating explanation of finite state grammar. It's ironic because i'm so pleased i can enjoy it. I love irony. I love being surprised. I love discovering that what i thought might a drag or disappointment is ironically still, or newly fascinating. Now, if i may attempt some correlations. applications. ...enunciations.
When we pine for a person...we hope that person will a) take notice b) check us out & c) romantically chase us come hell or high water. maybe you can describe it as "glorying in some new found love....enamored and giddy". ...or something like that. But normally there is a problem. The problem seems to be a, b, and c are supposed to go two ways, that is, between the men and the women. I'll call it romantic reciprocity (because i love verbosity). There's all kinds of ways of sending the signals and attempting to clue in the love interest that there is, in fact, interest. Can we please fall in love? But if reciprocity is not somehow worked out, then we pine in our own little worlds.
So we can do our best to say, "i like you" and initiate, but then we must wait. Sometimes we wait a very long time. Sometimes our initiation is never well received or understood. Sometimes we give up way to soon because we think that other person is not responding the way we expect them to. The point is men and women have to initiate and they do it differently. And then we have to wait. And waiting is not sitting on pins and needles, self criticizing or neglecting all the other things to do. We cannot wait for another to define us. That is, check us out, romantically discover what we wish they'd see. We have to go on enjoying who we are (our interests), such that at some point, that person...whomever it is, may wake up and say, "Wow, what an interesting person you are." I do believe that is the order of things.

This may follow with, "Do you know what finite state grammar is?"
"No."
"Are you enamored with me yet?"
"...maybe." and so on.

to not detract from the horrible process of "initiation" and "reciprocity", I will not expound on my thoughts of "love" in this entry. that can be for another entry.

Joseph Conrad on writer's block

2008-10-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

I sit down religiously every morning, I sit down for eight hours every day - and the sitting down is all. Innthe course of that working way of eight hours I write three sentences which I erase before leaving the table in despair. Sometimes it takes all my resolution and power of self-control to refrain from butting my head against the wall. I want to howl and foam at the mouth but I daren't do it for fear of waking the baby and alarming my wife. After such crises of despair I doze for hours, still held conscious that there is that story that I am unable to write. Then I wake up, try again, and at last go to bed completely done up. So the days pass and nothing is done. At night I sleep. In the morning I get up with that horror of that powerlessness I must face through a day of vain efforts....
I seem to have lost all sense of style and yet I am haunted by the necessity of style. And that stroy I can't write weaves itself into all I se, into all I speak, into all I think, into the lines of every book I try to read. ...I feel my brain. I am distinctly conscious of the contents of my head. My story is there in a fluid - in an evading shape. I can't get hold of it. It is all there - to bursting, yet I can't get hold of it any more than you can grasp a handful of water....
I never mean to be slow. The stuff comes out at its own rate. I am always ready to put it down...the trouble is that too often, alas, I've to wait for the sentence, for the word... The worst is that while I'm thus powerless to porduce, my imaginaation is extremely active; whole paragraphs, whole pagges, whole chapters pass through my mind. Everything is there: descriptions, dialogue, reflection, everything, everything but the bleief, the conviction, the lonly thing needed to make me put pen to paper. I've thought out a volume a day till I felt sick in mind and heart and gone to bed, completely done up, without havinng written a line. The effort I put out should give birth to a Masterpieces as big as mountains, and it brings forth a ridiculous mouse now and then.

It's still true today :)

2008-10-18T11:50:00.001-07:00

what's better about writing? if that is, you're a writer. [why write?] is it possible to ask bad questions, questions that complicate good, generous simplicity? it seems to me that there are moments when everything is distilled, and you know not to chase after a dream, a dream that maybe is extravagant and certainly somewhat gratifying, to try and do something or become someone that maybe you're not. maybe the motive is somehow pride...and subtle discontent, a desire to feel more interesting. ["i've travelled there." "i did a PhD." or "i've won at black jack on the 9th hand.] the subtle difference then from striving to make a thing happen, and doing whatever 'it' is because life changes, things come our way...we don't determine everything; the difference is that we take too much pride in accomplishments. "i will do this. I will have that." ...we feel better when we're defining ourselves. then later, we want to do more, travel, move to a different city, edit the image...and discontent creeps back in. perhaps this is anything but living in the moment. perhaps some people are better at being and feeling content and enjoying themselves. that factor of enjoyment is critical. because while some strive and strive and strive, others attach themselves to every moment, as if the moment is why you live. so how does one live in the moment? with reasonable expectations...making plans, chasing dreams...relishing experience? how do you weigh the present? it's inescapable.

i know that living is no longer for me alone. ...to a degree, it's also not for others. i know that plans fall through and dreams are often never realized. I can see that the "rich and poor have this in common: the Lord is the Maker of them all." and that he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. i know that the moment is experiencing a Maker through a veil dividing heaven and earth. and I know that there was a veil torn in the temple when Jesus died. Jesus said, "Trust in God; trust also in me." and then, "Because I live, you also will live." i know that dreaming and making goals and not worrying are all good and have their place in a God given life. ...and life is only for a moment and then for something more.

That must be why Solomon said, "What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seeen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil - this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him."

today, that's why i write. :)

Evolution

2008-04-09T18:20:00.001-07:00

evolution: live life for other people.

“I like you.” you like who?

2008-04-05T11:51:00.000-07:00

(3^rd person)
I recollected the image standing next to them. We crowded the subway car, all holding on to something and interfering. I tried not to care, but they were striking. He was well dressed, with a distinctive leather attaché carried perfunctorily home. His face seemed tired but he smiled to himself as he stood there, as if something had happened earlier in the day, or he noticed something about all of us that we didn’t see. This detached amusement stayed me. What was funny? The other passengers seemed to look at nothing and the men looked at the ladies near the door. Then I noticed the ladies too. I wonder if they are always noticed, maybe not, but they seemed more…public, more noticed. They seemed more indifferent too, to everything crammed in that car, but expecting to be noticed. I was agitated…because that agitates me. Then I watched this fellow, modestly dressed and almost benignly retiring. Those ladies watched him too. It was different for them. I think they noted the same things I did about him, but wherever his contented grace came from, I think we all wanted it. We wanted to know why he seemed interesting. I wonder what he thought of us.

Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam...

2008-04-02T21:55:00.000-07:00

Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam...

How simple is getting married? For those who think morals pertain...I'm wondering and noticing in social circles I know of that people are getting married later. I don't think this a "new phenomenon", but I'm certainly a part of it and wondering what it's going to take? It seems to me there are more women running around who are more willing to...to take life's many and varied scenarios and make the best of it. I don't know how a woman falls in love, but it does seem there's some point where not everything has to be in order or make sense and that woman is still willing, willing to get married. Hmm.... I think men want as much order and certainty as women, but perhaps they need it less, even so, men want to be prepared to some extent, men with morals.

Now if women have a need to know what their man is about or trying to do, and so doing his best to do it, men bring their own..."concessions". It seems to me men have a sex dilemma. Everything about the world today comments on and tries to define what is desirable and attractive in the opposite gender. Because men are leaders (or supposed to be), society has indoctrinated women with a man made concept of themselves and identity. ...I don't know when this started, but it has gone on a long time. Now women don't need or want men to tell them about themselves, probably because men have mostly only "edited" and commentated on them, as opposed to accepting and choosing them.

The dilemma for men is reconciling expectations of sex (societies overwhelmingly many ideas), to sex with a person. Men have to try to decide what doesn't matter so much before there's a willingness to be committed. To do this men must know and choose what to love. Everything that detracts from or diminishes the essence and magnetism of that one woman, all the comparisons and other secret desires, those must be set aside, only then afterwards to be discovered in that woman. This is choosing AND choosing to discover...her. Everything wanted and hoped for will be found because she's loved, and no one else in the world matters so much now. Options don't matter. This kind of thinking is very contrary to the norm because men sleep with women (and women, men) with no expectations or thoughts whatsoever of being with them for good. In fact, too many people marry now with some kind of loophole thought for backing out.

Men need sex. Women do too, but I think in a different way; it's a different kind of need. Sex though, seems to me one critical factor that brings a man to be committal and willing to marry. I don't know what kind of lovers men are, but sex drive is a basic part of the DNA. I also don't know exactly how emotional attraction fits into all this, but it does. The emotional connection is very key to how men over time grow to view that woman. (So women, be patient...and strong.) After there's a willingness, I think affection grows. We become emotionally engaged (matched or contracted...in my thesaurus), and then there's an eagerness to be together regardless. We stop worrying and do marriage. I think we're never fully prepared to be married. We step into it and trust.

A story in English

2008-03-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

I was thinking while showering how incredibly many thoughts I have. If I told them all to you, which is impossible, it might resemble a plater the size of New York and heaps and heaps of serpentine thoughts sauced and tasting of raw Italian parmesan. ...that's a bit of introspection to digest. So, I won't tell you what I think of Barack Obama, and I won't tell you about the differences in doing a job and believing in what you do. It doesn't matter. I will tell you one thing. Introspection is worth something, but thoughtfulness on true story is better, fiction or non-fiction. It doesn't matter. It's the moral of the story. Make it make sense, and it’s of far greater worth. If we delve into me..well that may be interesting, perhaps even upsetting. But if I take you with me to explore the world around me, and with imagination; you will probably know me better then if I had ever intended to describe myself to you over pasta. I am something true, but God's world...which I fit in, is even truer. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jer.17:9)

I'm talking about variations on theme. "Even in literature or art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed." ~C.S. Lewis-

I love. but God is.

2008-03-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

If I tell you I love you, it's normal...and genuine too. I suppose I have varying degrees of affection for most people...and then some aversion too. Call me sentimental.

What if I said, "'True love never professes anything.'" It is abiding.

1 Jn. 21:17 Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."

"True love never professes anything." It is and it is known. "You cannot say nice things when the Lord speaks directly to you, the hurt is too terrific...the point of the hurt is the great point of revelation. Peter began to see how much he did love Jesus..." ~Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest March 1st and 2nd.

Of mice and men

2008-03-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

"Yes, I use a great many quotations; but they are illustrious and true, and, if I am not mistaken, they convey authority pleasurably. People say that I could use fewer. Of course I could; I might even omit them entirely. I shan't deny that I might even be totally silent; and perhaps that would be the wisest thing. But in view of the world's ills and shames it is hard to keep silent....If anyone asks why I do so abound with quotations and seem to dwell on them so lovingly, I can merely reply that I think my reader's taste is like mine. Nothing moves me so much as the quoted maxims of great men. I like to rise above myself, to test my mind to see if it contains anything solid or lofty, or stout and firm against ill-fortune, or to find if my mind has been lying to me a bout itself. And there is not better way of doing this - except by direct experience, the surest mistress - than by comparing one's mind with those it would most like to resemble. Thus, as I am grateful to my authors who give me the chance of testing my mind against maxims frequently quoted, so I hope my readers will thank me."
~Petrarch

i blog to be with you.

2008-03-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

the blogosphere is a never ending bloom of information and personalities. sometimes i wonder why so many people want to "publish" something...no matter what that something is. it seems there are probably a few good reasons, whether or not the content is good. for some it's a catharsis, a tick or release, a nice vignette to punctuate the day. for others it's work. you can monetize a readership. maybe there is one more generalization, people who write for others, hoping it's beneficial, wanting excellent writing. maybe that's idealistic and fussy. maybe it's too difficult to see why people want to "publish", but at root, i do think good writing is more for others than for me. maybe i ought to capitalize. All this writing then, seems to be the menagerie of the gigantic blogosphere. you write because you think you have something worthwhile to tell. you write because you can't sit still. you write because someone will read it. it's worth the time. you hope it will benefit. write?

Emmaus Road

2008-03-23T11:36:00.000-07:00

After the empty tomb, Jesus meets two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus. They didn't recognize him. Jesus talked with them, "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." (Luke 24:27) Can you imagine the Son of God himself telling you the meaning of the Bible story from beginning to end??

homelessness

2008-03-22T09:18:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about the homeless a lot lately. This morning it seemed a good analogy for something I read in Hebrews 11:37b,38...that I don't fully understand.

"They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated - the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground."

This is the "faith chapter" describing early Christians and the patriarchs. I was thinking homelessness is an interesting analogy because homelessness is much less having nowhere to sleep, than it is belonging to nowhere. It is being disconnected from family, community, work identity, normal responsibilities, and feelings of hope. It is despair and desperation and tiredness most of the time. You expect how people see you, and people don't know how to look at you when they don't know how to connect you. There are two things, two original things happening every day: God's things and things of the world. Homeless people I think more often then not, become homeless, without identity and belonging, because sin, disease, and personal pride infect us and them, such that we become "us" and "them". We disconnect. We separate. We very naively contribute to effacing another's worth because we think we don't belong together. That's indecent. It's foolish and cold. That's a tragedy. In fact, if I was homeless I don't think I'd want to associate with persons who, even before meeting me, drew those lines of "them" and "me". I think most homelessness is probably because people want to belong to themselves, their goals, their things, their people, their vices, their egos...even homeless people do this. So then, how do we belong together? How do I care less for me? That's not for me to explain today.

In Hebrews it talks of Gideon, Barak, Samson, David, and Samuel...all men who did some very big things. Then right after that, it mentions women receiving back from the dead their loved ones. I can only think that this is because more often women have very tender spirits to the Lord. Then we read of those persecuted, who "wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground." The world ostracized them, but that's to be expected. Those people belonged to heaven. That's a different kind of homelessness...a hopeful one. Heaven was home. Jesus walked the Earth. He demonstrated how to how to find heaven and live here, on Earth.

...this expectation of not belonging here, this disenchanted "knowing" everything under the sun as Solomon talks about, everything we expect and hope for from this world and all its fascinations...is a small indication that this is not home. We can taste it and nothing else tastes right. "Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." Jer. 29:12,13

"Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Matt. 11:28

los montanas...sin la nya...damn english keyboards

2008-03-21T09:33:00.000-07:00

I love Bolivia.

Bible be

2008-03-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

I was thinking it is not enough for those around me to hear me say a verse...people reference the Bible all the time. That's good, and the Bible works of its own accord. I was thinking I need to be versed, that is, know what and why I believe it...then trust that decision. But not only must those things be hidden in the heart, those things must be seen, responded to. (responding is the trusting.) I need to be verse. …and that is telling the truth, talking about it, meditating on it, following it, doing it. Bible be me.

So, for example, when the Lord says to Israel, his chosen people, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.” (Isa. 46:10) I read that as, the God beyond time, time I sit and wake and work and feel in, that God will make known something I can’t see. Probably many things. I will and I am realizing a few right now. God knows a lot of chronologies too: families, people groups, cities and nations, orphans and saints, revolutions, scientific advances, and complete desolation, famine, genocide, epidemic disease. He has some purpose and no one can keep him from doing it. …if we’re honest most of us don’t know what God is doing most of the time. But then again, it’s also clear that we are to ask God for wisdom, confess sin, believe, confess Jesus is God, love our neighbor, have mercy, persevere, pray because he cares, pray for the saints, imitate Christ, be salt, lay hold of the kingdom, look after orphans and widows. I think I'm part of that purpose. I'm in it. ...is it becoming me? Vayas conmigo?

I forget how much I love people

2008-03-19T21:28:00.001-07:00

How do you forget how much you love someone? Did you love them? Was it not memorable...?
I have many old relationships. Older than dirt. It feels weird to make new ones. It takes time to make new ones. People sometimes think I'm weird when we've not covered ourselves in dirt...like children, in the old days. I think perhaps I love these "Old Ones" now more than I did when I met them. ...that's how I "forget." I didn't love as much as I do now.

your eye and your brain

2008-03-18T23:24:00.000-07:00

I start new posts all the time. I don't post many of them because I don't finish thinking through them. ...there's a variety of wonderfully incomplete witty titles and bullets and no explanations in between. (I do this with picking up books too.) ...i fear it's almost indicative of a deep problem I'm only vaguely conscious of how to work around. But to reference a new writer I discovered (new to me, Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist On Mars.):

The study of disease, for the physician, demands the study of identity, the inner worlds that patients, under the spur of illness, create. But the realities of patients, the ways in which they and their brains construct their own worlds, cannot be comprehended wholly from the observation of behavior, from the outside. In addition to the objective approach of the scientist, the naturalist, we must employ an intersubjective approach too, leaping, as Foucault writes, "into the interior of morbid consciousness, [trying] to see the pathological world with the eyes of the patient himself."
This sense of the brain's remarkable plasticity, its capacity for the most striking adaptations, not least in the special (and often desperate) circumstances of neural or sensory mishap, has come to dominate my own perceptions of my patients and their lives.
Defects, disorders, diseases, in this sense, can play a paradoxical role, by bringing out latent powers, developments, evolutions, forms of life, that might never be seen, or even be imaginable, in their absence. It is the paradox of disease, in this sense, it's "creative" potential, that forms the central theme of this book.

Mr. Sacks is talking about one, the indefinably vast concept of disease and the opposing noun, "wellness." Do you know how sick or well you are? Perhaps. When a doctor diagnoses a problem, he simply has a much better idea of whatever illness ails you. He's studied it and recognizes the signs. The point is the disease has you. Some part of it infected you and you hope you'll get better. "Betterness" too is simply something of degrees. The old man who eats from his garden every day might have remarkable immunity and mental acuteness, but his hearing is poorer and he's more feeble because his body is worn down. The Chicago Bull's center might be remarkably fit and energetic, but he has an enlarged heart. Two, Mr. Sacks is talking about how we as people adapt and even become different people (for better and worse) because of weaknesses. He calls it the "paradox of disease."

I have taken the Grey Hound twice, both times to Washington, D.C. Both times I was there I noticed lots of homeless people. In fact, the bus station in D.C. is in a bad part of town, and I remember once getting off the bus and waiting to be picked up at the main entrance and across the street were three men lying on their backs on the ground at the curb. One was yelling madly. I don't know what he was saying and to hear it was almost comical, but the sight was not. I remember feeling a bit afraid.

The second time I visited D.C. I ate in the most fascinating nightlife district. It's called Adams Morgan. It's so interesting because it is mostly ethnic bars and eateries that line the street at the tree lined walk, and all are renovated in what appeared to be old brick two and three story townhomes and brownstones. I was sitting on the sidewalk patio at an Ethiopian cafe drinking excellent Ethiopian coffee and thinking how attractive our Ethiopian server taking care of us was, when a man came up to the patio gate staring at me. He was thick and taller than me. He wore a blue coat and he was unshaven. If I only told you that he was a homeless man, black, and demanding, you might not think much of it. After all...most of us have had similar experiences at one time or another, but I have never met a homeless man like him since.

Matthew 6:22 The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

There is what you see with your eyes, and there is what you see with your brain. Color is color because of the rods and cons in the retina, but the brain assembles those colors. The brain names and classifies and attaches emotion and memories to those colors. I was sitting on the other side of the gate, and I remember most the mans eyes. I remember I think because I remember how i felt. He looked at me and I think maybe he hated me, and that was because I was sitting on the other side of the gate. He knew nothing about me. He probably has no memory of me. What he viewed with his eyes was precluded in his body because of hatred. He seemed to hate the whole world, and I remember it in his eyes. I think that if I had said the wrong thing or been in a different place, he might have been violent. But we weren't anywhere else, and I was mad that he ignored me, defiantly, malevolently (as if he didn't even hear himself), and I was mad that I felt hated. What had I done? I believe I hated him in back. I felt it in me. What is the point?

It's simply that we are born into "brokenness", this condition, this paradox. We are passing through, and sin and life through us. Do we know it? We participate. How great is that darkness? There's a war in us. It has us. I think maybe if I had not returned such a dead stare, that man may have relented. If I had been more humble, less defiant, and treated him as a poor man filled with a lot of hate and problems he didn't even recognize, then maybe something different might have happened. In fact, I'm certain of it. Next time you meet one of these men, don't be afraid. Ask God to be in your eyes and in your looking. In fact, ask Him to be in your heart and in your thinking. We're not that much different, you know? We're all patients in a way.

Mr. Sacks says, "Sickness implies a contraction of life, but such contractions do not have to occur. Nearly all of my patients, so it seems to me, whatever their problems, reach out to life - and not only despite their conditions, but often because of them, and even with their aid."

urbex

2008-03-17T14:44:00.001-07:00

Urban Exploration, Urbex, UE
I used to read meters for the power company in Dayton, OH. Dayton used to be industrial city, so there are lots of old buildings. Many of these buildings have been modified with time and new businesses, but so much has never changed at all. I had to explore downtown blocks and closets to find the electric meters and power supplies where Dayton Power & Light has probably put cables for Dayton's power grid since the beginning of...i don't know when. I was something of an "urban explorer" and these video clips are kind of reminiscent of those days. Explore your city.

http://www.forgottenoh.com/subway.html

Dear persons of the opposite gender

2008-03-12T23:38:00.000-07:00

The Argentine Tango

Dear persons of the opposite gender...to me. I'm male. I'll keep this short, as the possibilities of muddling the message with humorous examples...somehow agitates me. Instead I'll speak in a very formal...maybe "bookish" way, and say, "...damn it woman. blah!"

There are several ways to categorize women. I don't care if you blanch, and the point is not to categorize here. But I thought i might mention that if you are of the opposite gender...to me, and you get loads of attention from the male sex for plenty of normal reasons and because you're good looking, then i suppose tonight i simply wish to say i've seen...most of you, that is, you and every other woman who has received plenty (maybe too much) attention for being attractive fit nicely into the "lame communicators category". That's not to say you aren't smart and don't have interesting things to say, but it is to say you don't seem responsive...when i am. (i will explain that in paragraph 3: jared's category) You don't seem responsive to me when i am communicating to you because a lot of people are looking at you. Your attention is divided. That annoys me a bit. Maybe you should pay better attention. I won't tell you what to notice because I'm learning how to kill and not kill relationships. You know, telling someone, "you weary me...sigh...don't you see this or that or it's impolite?" or "But I thought I might mention...."

Paragraph 3: I believe I fit this category, and that is, I probably find something interesting in most people, women. That is not because I'm so unselfish or even considerate. It is because I'm curious. ...this curiosity makes me engaging, I think. I enjoy getting to know people. I mean to find why you are interesting because you inherently are.

Paragraph 4: The effect. or the affect? With women there is something that happens in the brain where the woman thinks I'm into her. I don't know on what level. I don't know if it's me. But the upshot is either she wants to go on getting to know me in a less than platonic way, maybe even super fast, reminiscent of a train coming straight me (and I must indicate something decisive), or the other woman, lameo communicator, drops all dialog however innocent or interested. (Are you an amnesiac? no, I don't think so either.) I begrudgingly love her because this is how the dance goes. As I see it, it's almost the same dance, with one, then the other. In fact, I begrudging love both...and I think maybe I don't love dancing. It's possible I may be good at it.

In the "platonica dance", you check out your partner. You don't dance on them. You dance with them. You don't stand at a distance, staring, pretending. You hold hands. This is how to dance. I'm okay now with rejection. It's even helpful. I appreciate confident response to the prospects of dancing...in a huge ball with tons of people to look at and aperitif to enjoy, one dance at a time. I'm less okay with women who are dodgy or who can't relax and enjoy themselves or dancing.

Dancing is dancing. It is not making love. It isn't even walking down the street holding hands. Believe me, I can't wait to "dance" all over a king's size bed. But that doesn't happen too often: 1 partner, 1 dance...and the rest is history. In fact, I think we're supposed to become good dancers, men and women. I think dancing helps us enjoy each other. And this leads me to the last way you can categorize me...at least tonight. Men and women go to a dance and communicate they want to dance. All kinds of signals are sent. Men lead, and if it's romance, you both know it. If it's romance, you'll know it. I'm might even abruptly tell you, ask you. "Can we date? Can I date you? I have a new dance." So...please let misconceptions go and wait for me. I want to let you know.

What I meant to say:
"Damn it woman"
If it seems I’m communicating with you, do you mind paying attention and being polite? It’s only dialogue/dancing the platonica.Get over yourself.
I’m curious and so are you.
I’m not taking you seriously for a long while. I promise to tell you if it’s romance.
Don’t run me over and don’t avoid me. That only creates misconceptions…which may be damaging...for you and for me.
Prior to clear romantic interest, I do believe flirting is fine. The "platonica dance" is not misleading.
Learn to enjoy dancing. I am too.
Wait for me. Meanwhile, dance. Don't forget to smile. You look radiant.

Archbishop of Canterbury

2008-03-11T12:59:00.000-07:00

In your own words.... I am genuinely impressed.

how to enjoy things you don't have.

2008-03-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

I was thinking today about things i don't have, not too many, but things I think i need. It doesn't matter a whole lot because, regardless of how i feel, I don't have them. It occurred to me, I can fret and try to find a way to get those things, and soon enough they will be critical, bare necessity things, or I change my feelings. I can enjoy that I don't have them. That sounds absurd. How do you then enjoy "them"? Do you switch gears and enjoy things you have? ...not exactly. It is important to be grateful for things we have, but I think what I'm talking about is disassociating "enjoyment" from things. That's difficult, but if you can say, "Well, today I don't have what I want. Oh well," then maybe you can detach yourself and find satisfaction in something else. Maybe you can "enjoy what you don't have." I recognize this is a bit abstract, but take for example me. I don't have a job. Soon I will need a job. If I don't have income, I can't enjoy Whole Foods. It must be noted that I derive enormous amounts of satisfaction from food, good whole foods. It almost bereaves me thinking I can't go get something as simple as sweet potatoes and spinach to cook a delectable meal. I need to find a job...but today, right now, everything is fine. I'm eating spinach pasta at this moment. So, "how" do I maintain perspective right now? I enjoy that fact that I don't have a job with something I do have. Writing. Later I will enjoy driving the Mercedes that's sitting in the driveway, as I go and look for work...to pay for other things.

Not until we do have absolutely nothing will we inextricably sense that living is not about things. Think Corrie Ten Boom. It is about why we are living, and you can find that in Colossians. ...And the Who? is also called Love.

Things that have happened in the last 7 months.

2008-03-08T12:07:00.000-08:00

Returned from Bolivia.
Visited Chicago's museum of natural history. unbelievable.
Moved to Nashville.
got a valet job.
got fired. (wrongfully) yes, it happens. no, i am not to blame.
did not have work. did not go insane.
was in a near fatal car wreck. was not hurt. no car for 1.5 months.
got a new/old car, which promptly went haywire. transmission.
was reimbursed (thank God).
got a Mercedes for half the price of the deathtrap Honda.
became a "real estate photographer".
took photos of Belle Meade homes and was not well received.
was laid off and am no longer a "real estate photographer".
watched a lunar eclipse.
decided to move to the moon.
fixed the Mercedes and drank beer with Otto. Otto is the best landlord in the whole world.
woke up today. made coffee.
I've been "stretched" and God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit have been visibly working. For that I'm grateful...visible workings that is.
have renewed writing interest.
changed the world i hope.

maxims

2008-03-05T20:06:00.000-08:00

Christ will be your "good infection", and I will be his contagion. :)

hang the @#$! in there

2008-03-04T21:45:00.000-08:00

do you know what stymie means? it means you sit and feel numb. why is that? "why the numbness and the sitting?" you might say. maybe you wag your finger, indicating the disposition and whole picture before you. if i were writing this scene as if it were me sitting, let's say in a well worn rush seat chair, the kind you find in the attic. it's nostalgic and the rungs are loose and it doesn't fit with the kitchen table anymore. if it were me in that chair and for some reason you were looking for me and wagging your finger, i might say, "is string theory what some people suppose to be the common denominator for the apparent interconnectedness of the everything?" or more probably i will say, "what did you do today?"

.....you know. i'm stymied. can someone throw me a bone?

Thank you for the bone. I think I can go on. I can go on for many reasons. One is hope and hope doesn't come from solving string theory, which is not lame it is simply...2 dimensional, that is, it doesn't permit divine or supernatural explainations to exist with mathematical explainations....or how we can describe networks and physics. BUT it does inevitably provoke the baffling non-existence of explainations for the divine. this is what i love about science. in one form or another the trail leads to a precipice and belief. belief can't be completely scientific. ...i'm discovering that i love all inexact sciences. (that is for another blog.)

Now. The only other reason I might say, "is string theory what some people....blah blah yada yada" is because i want to dramatically divert your attention. in other words, i don't care about string theory. i care about feeling numb and sitting in the chair and not feeling numb and getting on with things. that's less convenient to talk about and i'll probably deter you. however...this doesn't mean don't wag your finger or indulge me. it also doesn't mean you can't ignore me all together and ask, "what did you do today?" because that's great, when we can get past what's said to who we are. ...i say all kinds of things. thanks for asking. thanks for loving me.

Now, today is a new day. and "joy comes in the morning", or rather "His mercies are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness," not mine. string theory, from the pathetically limited knowledge i have DOES NOT bring the morning, nor the sun or...wow, snow. perhaps it explains it a little bit...but now i'm in territory i know nothing about. the point is joy is eternal. i'm more than carbon. and strings are fun. okay, any more bones you have?? :) salud and cheerio.

Things I want to do

2008-02-23T18:25:00.000-08:00

Read Les Miserables. ...and more Simon Winchester.
get married.
write 5 books.
a U.C. Irvine PhD...or a PhD
a masters at the American University of Beirut...or a masters.
climb a lot more than i am.
teach.
a triathlon.
eat las paletas every day.
Potentially live abroad.
missions in one form or another.
See Columbia, Venezuela, Chile, Holland, the U.K., Italy, Croatia and the Balkans, Switzerland, and bus through Central America.
read more of the Bible.

"I rarely end up where i was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere that I needed to be."
Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Things I've tried

2008-02-23T18:17:00.000-08:00

sales.
pharmacology.
econometrics.
the coast guard.
unicycling. it's difficult.
reading the Bible.
mountaineering.

...there is more to add to this list...and it seems as though I've "done" more things then I've tried and failed. I hadn't noticed that. I'm glad I made this list.

Things I've done

2008-02-23T11:37:00.000-08:00

Taken Calculus 2 at night, two nights a week.
Went to a Community College.
Worked as a meter reader for DP&L while going to community college.
Read every meter in downtown Dayton.
Bicycled 110 miles 2 days in a row.
Time trialed.
Competed in district swim meets.
Boxed once.
Been in two musicals: Hello Dolly and Fiddler on the Roof
Juggled a soccer ball 183 times.
Grew up in the inner city.
Broke my pinkie.
Memorized the book of James.
Two science fairs. I only remember one...which was nominated to international science fair competition.
Lived in China, 1984-1987.
Visited Hong Kong.
Train hopped in Wyoming...for 10 minutes.
Watched the world's largest rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming
4H projects
Homeschooled
Collected insects...and later donated the collection.
Applied to one university, Miami U of Ohio.
Worked for the school welder.
Worked as a fine dining waiter.
Worked at Starbucks.
Been a test subject for fighter pilot helmets.
Lived in an honors dorm...never enrolled in an honors program.
Explored every steam tunnel on campus.
Climbed the tallest grain tower in Oxford. I estimate 120 feet.
Studied Economics and Geography and women and professors.
Began climbing at Miami U. Still climb today.
Competed in endless chess games.
Hosted "Balderdash night".
Made a 10x10 tree platform 50 ft above ground from poles and rope. There I retreated.
Designed and fabricated a climbing wall.
Worked in a cemetery for 2 weeks.
Painted my bedroom "dill".
Read the Brothers Karamazov.
Sold most of my belongings.
Studied in Buenos Aires. Lived in San Telmo with a Czech, French, and German.
Visited Iguazu.
Visited Cuidad Del Este, Paraguay, rumored al-Qaeda's S. American base.
Bused across S. America
Met the world record holder for the fastest ascent and descent of the tallest Mtn in the western hemisphere.
Kissed a Chileana.
Bused 40hrs straight through the driest desert in the world, Atacama Chile.
Lived and was un profesor de Ingles in La Paz, Bolivia.
Was the tenant of Silvia Rivera, S. America's foremost sociologist.
Personally know Ernesto Wende, Bolivias stock exchange founder.
Went trekking with shoe shiners.
Went swimming in the Amazon pampas.
Got salmonella and amoebas...wanted to die.
Visited Cuzco and Machu Picchu.
Recovered the body of a pastor drowned in the seasonal flooding.
Moved to Nashville.
Made a pot roast.

Dear God

2008-01-18T15:50:00.000-08:00

"Can I please be smart?"
"Why do you ask?"
"...because I want to be good at something."
"You think if you are smart, you will be good at something?"
"Maybe."
"Do you want all of whatever that is to come now?"
"Kinda."
"I made you smart enough. Why don't you enjoy it now?"
"I'm sorry. I'm impatient and I think I have difficulties."
"Tell me about the difficulties. I'm aware of them. Explore what interests you now. I direct men's steps. You were born into waiting for me. Do you see it? I am writing you. You aren't complete. Enjoy knowing that you won't be until I'm done, and I know exactly what you're good at. You're rather exceptional at it. Many many people, people I know all about, don't know to wait. These people go and go, hoping for the next thing. Others don't even know what's missing. Everything is there for the taking. Their lives begin and end so fast. Wait. Enjoy me."

adventing

2008-01-17T21:04:00.001-08:00

There is such a thing as timed chess. i'm not very good at it. i think it is because i think slowly and deeply...similar to the ocean. please pretend that analogy makes perfect sense. i don't know why i can't be a clever poet or chairman of the Federal Reserve. I've written poems. but...not recently. I'm very good at self-editing. "but...not recently" is not even remotely a complete sentence or thought. It's a banal fragment and has nothing to do with the Federal Reserve. Regardless, I will write to think, and it is probable no one will read it because i see few do, but that is not the point. The point is that I might not ever be a great debater, though I am so enthralled with them. BECAUSE i get it. I think I bobble a bit when lots of eyes are on me...therefore I write, and what is written...can be read...afteritiswritten. The point is that I follow. I do get economics. I sense poetry, often and poorly. I know what words do.... Why? It's one thing to be smart. It's another thing to know how to apply it. That's a new maxim of mine. I'm somewhere in between. Between smart enough to follow and benefiting the world.

Yes, that is a shifting paradigm.

I don't know when arrival is? I don't think it looks the way i thought. It may have nothing to do with notoriety or money. That's something i discerned. The smartest ones are the ones helping the most because. Their motives are the smartest. I think i'm defining words differently then is normal, for example "smartness". Maybe I'm spelling "wisdom" or "godliness". I have this inkling that's where I'm going. I know everyone will benefit. hmmmmmmmmm. I need a lot of help along the way.

write away write away

2007-12-26T21:37:00.001-08:00

"I don't want to agree to disagree. I don't want to agree or disagree. If I do that I can never get to know you." Do you want that? ...now where to begin? How about the navel? No? I have one too. See?

pensamientos sobre

2007-12-25T22:32:00.000-08:00

"There is time," I remember her saying. "Time for everything."
I remember thinking, 'Why does she say that? Where does this confidence come from? Do I participate in this?' Maybe she sees something I haven't tried to communicate. I'll bet that's true. That is true. So I know...there is one thing she loves in me, but how she'll say it I don't know. Maybe that's the marvel of genuine relationship, the things known or loved or forgiven that aren't mentioned. Then one day one is discovered. One is mentioned. "Why do you eat standing there looking out the window everyday? I'm going to stand next to you every day and look out the window while eating." Maybe you laugh. Maybe you stop speaking. Nothing changed. But two half selves conjoined and matched, meld again and again. How many lines make a Celtic cross? One? Two? That's the way you tell me about me and I about you. That one thing I know...has not been identified correctly. Only it's attributes, which are so striking. And now I sit here and think with the biggest grin on my face, 'There is time, time for everything.'

Do you ever meet someone and sense 'this person can take me.' Mr. X can listen. He can take me all the way in and wrestle with me. Only after, do you think about it. Did my feelings deceive me? ...No one has ever looked at me that way before. ...that doesn't make sense. That's odd. And he made me mad! What a shocking connection. I hope we meet again. I hope we can know each other again.

I was thinking that as I stared at Ms. X, that we connected, but only for a minute. Chance intimacy is probably not intimacy. That was the past. And as I watched you I somehow watched the future. I was mad about you. Your high brow and watchful eye. The poise and thoughtful ensemble. Everything in its place. I was mad about you. The whole knowing how events might unfold. It's possible, who's surprised? But then you smile. I see it and it always stirs me. Because you smile I know you, and no mirror can ever tell you what these eyes of mine can see. I think I'm probably mad about you.

I don't know how much time has passed. I suppose that it's still passing. And I don't know if you know I'm here, or if you want to see me staring. There are only two things to do if you know a man who's staring. 1) Get up. Walk away. Don't believe what your heart is feeling. Or 2) look back. Take a minute and trust the one you're seeing. You can only jump in. There is only faith and reason. So dispel your fear, root that imagination. Some day I think I will talk to you. Because there was one time you came near me. That was the past.

The meantime is now, and now, ironically I can sit and watch all day. The dreamer's eye, not speaking. Was I? ...Maybe I was. Mad about you.

In good books.

2007-12-15T11:34:00.000-08:00

The writer says to his readers, "Do you know why you listen to me? Why you read my books and say, 'Astounding'? It is because I am like you. You can identify with me. You can read these written words and say, 'Oh! I have felt that. It makes sense! People - silly, smart, foolish, self-absorbed people do that. That very thing! ...these things you write about. I see it."

"And do you know reader why we read good books? One very obvious reason is to learn. But have you ever asked yourself, 'What exactly am I learning?' Can you summarize it in the three points? Some very gifted people can. But I think very often we are absorbing so many thoughts and implications that it may be a challenge to say succinctly what."

This is how I feel when I read the Bible and this is how I think many people do or do not understand God's person. The Bible contains some of the richest description of relationship I have ever read. Because the Bible's Author is the consummation of story through time in history and epithets - God's names. We are in relationship and he wants us to know him. Why is he good? How does he work? What kind of people are we? Can we know him? How? How is it possible to understand?

The longer I am a Christian, the more I am conscious of my sin and what I know is truth. It's a weighty place, an unsettling place, a pivoting plain...as wide as your eyes can see. I am a wide-eyed child...still learning how to talk...coherently.

"When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understand his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right."
-C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity

This is what I read in my Bible this morning.

Isaiah 54:4-8
You will forget the shame of your youth and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. For your Maker is your Husband - the Lord Almighty is his name - the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth. The Lord will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit - a wife who married young, only to be rejected," says your God. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you," says the Lord your Redeemer.

55:6-9
Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

You: scribbles for someone

2007-12-05T21:13:00.000-08:00

you

I know what I say when I see that you have no heart. You are heartless. What did you do with it? Did you not want it? I loved it before you stopped up your ears and with tears shot holes in your beautiful heart. I love you now, but you look deathly ill and your words spell despair. There is never bright light in your eyes. You don't bring me joy. I feel sorrow because I see you.

I know what I say when I see…because I hear you have brilliance. You speak lots of things and comprehend lots of expression…of knowledge…in different mediums, but you have no emotion. Everything is jade. Everything is permissible and there is little difference in meaning.

Or maybe I see you are only emotion, and not one principle. You bleed derision or conceit or blatant hatred. You scream confusion, but when have you stood still? When have you asked why and expected an answer? And listened. I know you know lots of things. And think lots of things and feel lots of things. Stop dreaming what you want. Ask me what you have. Nightmares happen at night and are bad. Don't say, "I'm fine. I'm fine as fuck." You're not. Don't live a nightmare because you want to. It's bad for you. Don't call it good. It's not. Don't let in a lie.

I looked up to heaven and beheld a great light. It cast me in brilliance and heat. I didn't know I was so complicated or impressible, nor that I was blind and never discerned color. I had only ever contemplated me. I didn't know why blood stirred me to waking? I didn't know I was heartless. Because I didn't know the heart is a matter of perspective. Someone told me. That is why I see you.

Clive Staples. pg. 38, 39 in my book

2007-12-05T20:57:00.001-08:00

It's worth your inquiring mind.

"Now my third point. When I chose to get to my real subject in this roundabout way, I was not trying to play any kind of trick on you. I had a different reason. My reason was that Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the sort of facts I have been describing. Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness. It is after you have realised that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power--it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor. When you have realised that our position is nearly desperate you will begin to understand what the Christians are talking about. They offer an explanation of how we got into our present state of both hating goodness and loving it. They offer an explanation of how God can be this impersonal mind at the back of the Moral Law and yet also a Person. They tell you how the demands of this law, which you and

I cannot meet, have been met on our behalf, how God Himself becomes a man to save man from the disapproval of God. It is an old story and if you want to go into it you will no doubt consult people who have more authority to talk about it than I have. All I am doing is to ask people to face the facts--to understand the questions which Christianity claims to answer. And they are very terrifying facts. I wish it was possible to say something more agreeable. But I must say what I think true. Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth--only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. Most of us have got over the pre-war wishful thinking about international politics. It is time we did the same about religion."

Transcendentgivedness

2007-11-21T10:04:00.000-08:00

I know why i haven't written my book yet. It's because I have a lazy writer's mind. I do not have a lazy mind. It's also because I'm so critical of what i write, but who isn't. i'll tell you, the people making loads blogging. is it all beneficial? up to the minute? pertinent beyond pertinent? no. but plenty of it is informative, simply not knee jerking, head snapping, steam heat the cranium-profound. but this is. the only other reason i have not written my book yet, which in addition (but not, because it is more a function of f(x)=??) IS why i have a lazy writer's mind, IS i have no time. everyone says that, "I don't have time to blah blah blah." that's fine, but i don't have to time develop this skill, writing. not everyone says that about development, normally it's about time to talk to so and so, or finding time to get the groceries, or for those slightly more concerned with growth, time to garden. garden is both a noun and a verb. i will say that my writer's mind is generally more insane at night. insane because everything is working at extremely fast speeds and i can't put it down fast enough. i can barely keep up. so i flit from one perfect complete thought to the next and it's all worth the time, but very little is inexorably explored. so...i still go to bed on a small bed, all alone and bereft of female companionship. and i converse for two somewhere in the frontal lobe i think. i must say i do love writing. i love how it feels.

on the subject of time, which is interwoven with nearly every subject i can think of because i'm interminably confined within it. it is now 1:20AM. i know that i've not written half the wonderful thoughts i had tonight, all whilst eating a breed of apple i have never in my life heard of, but which apparently exists and is made available to me because i live in America and Whole Foods has every named apple ever named.

5 minutes later.

yes, 5. it seems i'm lossing steam and speed and memory. i wanted to say something about how i'm thinking as though i'm a CEO. thinking. i'm not a CEO yet, but i imagine thinking does precede it. agree.

i had an untold plethora of silver lined clouds raining down little confirmations of how or why "to whom much is given, much will be expected." that's from the Bible. the most brilliant book every written. and so, written through Job to Revelation and 40 different men. men God inspired, not men inspired. and God is not described in time. He does go into it, like plunging in the ocean, or Jesus to be more exact. and I'm reading a book about him called Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die.

...And I'm remembering why all the little epiphanies. "to whom much is given, much will be expected," we think of that as money, time, something i can offer. i'm a pobre (en espanol) a poor person, not the CEO. BUT i've been given eternal life. there's nothing greater i've been give. it's the greatest thing i can tell you. so, i have some lovely perspective on the present poverty. mine isn't poverty of spirit or "why? why? why? why me, God?" this is how things are. but i have something. you want it? i have a river of life flowing out of me. makes the lame to walk and the blind to see. opens prison doors. sets the captives free. i've got a river of life flowing out of me.

...and so i flit to this: "For in this hope we are saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?" Romans 8:24

Who hopes for what he already has? I have it all. What are you hoping for? tell me. I'm curious and I bet I can think of how to get it.

Currently reading :
A Tour of the Calculus
By David Berlinski
Release date: By 28 January, 1997

2007-07-10T11:12:00.001-07:00

Heartfelt sentimental sap with a teaspoon of truth.

The problem with wanting to write is…a million. But the compulsion to write is always there. I read that Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy and that he went to the military academy for civil engineering. He also was penniless more than once and yet literally moved Russia with his first novel Notes from the Underground. I'm honestly a bit baffled and don't have any concept of the political or socioeconomic mental of that day, but it happened. I imagine he didn't expect the impact. I think he was insufferably critical of himself, and yet, he wrote profusely, I think with an indifference, a determination. There's an introspection and detachment from what is so subtle and everyday, what is often "unsaid" but what cudgels the brain into an inability to "make sense", let alone express feeling or longing or despair, or maybe a blinding euphoria or maybe the deepest, waiting gladness. Do you feel it? that passing emotion? was it there? Did you pay it attention? No, it's almost imperceptible. It's nothing. Why express what you don't understand? why tell someone? But it was there. "Where is he today? Will he write his book? Why can't we know what we don't know? why am I my own worst critic, sitting here, whisky in hand, and knowing i've known more than this. i'm not exactly the train wreck in Notes, deliberately elaborating on why 2+2 makes 4 and why there is nothing for it but to do nothing, because to move, is to get trampled or expend engery you don't have or slam into a glass wall you can't avoid if you take one step the inevitable wrong direction. i can't be that, an irrefutable math problem. i don't have only one answer, and i've been loved."

This candor of heart and mind, with some intuition of what is good writing and a talent for description, held as a winter globe in the left hand—the story, and the relentless pen in the right hand, this is makes the story in the mind's eye, a book, a complete piece. This is when the detached and disinterested public opens one eye and blinks. "What's that? This is a window into a mind. What kind of mind is this, that shamelessly exhales…and in print, let alone before the little people who see him in his little world? This character isn't afraid of living…."

You have to have nerve to write. You have to have an ego to be willing to tell the public "not only is this worth reading, it's good." And you have to believe it is good. It's putting your neck on the line for a car to run over your head. Why write to merely attempt? Why write to merely impress? Then you've stopped before you began. You're conforming to a book, the image of you for everyone to see, and everyone thinks you're a great novelist and eagerly awaits your next piece, when you think "that book", that epitomised tale, should provoke and fascinate fickle minds. It must teach and empathize and give voice to things we hardly speak. It can't be a work to merely pass the time or the motive of fame, an exaggerated view of oneself. It has to be an extension of oneself, a reflection of something seen or internalized. That's better writing, intentional writing, worthwhile writing. That must be art, living art. And the right hand diligently writes. The hand that holds your left and leads you down a shaded path. That hand that grips you when you don't speak, except with bright, curious eyes. You must move that pen if you're going to write.

I don't know how many times I've stared at the ground in the plaza. Do you ever have the sensation that moments of your day are the middle of a fish eye camera lens? That the commotion of the plaza, the clouds and blue sky and street lamps and looming plaza statue and periphery trees and the whole assortment of people milling and sitting about have always been there and for this moment you're walking between them? "Is that the same chubby face inserting that same fat hand into that same orfice of a mouth? What on God's green earth compels a child to do that? Who is his attractive mother and is she aware that her son has handled everything brown and green and small and rubbished? Does she see her son's new fascination and strange profile? I think I've seen her before? All these ambling, well-dressed, shapely women and high maintenance children are looking the same. ...I want to be a dad. How is it to have awife? What planet am I on?"

You've seen it all before but today you feel old and disproportionate, kind of oblong and bigheaded, a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade blimp, or as if you're an ant peering up at your own inflated, slow motion body. You put one foot in front of the other and are aware that people see you, moving across the plaza, but you can't pay any more attention. "They'll be here tomorrow. I'll think they're interesting tomorrow. I'll sit there and stare again tomorrow. But last night…that was yesterday. That's why I'm irritable and so introverted. Who thinks it's ok to get completely drunk off his mind and then robbed at the front door? Why have I been woken on 2 hour intervals to unlock the door for five different people? What kind of wife loves and forgives that kind of idiocy? I need to eat something."

“I’m an idiot for not enjoying your company.”

2007-06-02T16:08:00.001-07:00

I don’t know if this is becoming customary, but I feel you should know the position of my body. I suppose I want to mention it because I am comfortable, very comfortable, as in reclined in an old refurbished, black leather, simple wooden chair. That is not all. I’ve found a nook. Literally, I have squeezed into this space and set my leg in the window, such that anyone looking from below can only see a comfortable leg and maybe hear the lilting voice of The Frames Irish brogue passing through the window. And now the sun is burning my face. I feel great. You should go and find a nook too. I am almost certain when the sun scorches your face you’ll feel better. It’s a key ingredient. If the sun is not scorching your face you invariably feel hateful and condescending. Am I right? You don’t give a damn and you hate everyone. Am I right? Don’t answer. I have to define for you idiocy.

Now…it seems to me that a problem I have and maybe you have but I’ve met plenty of people who haven’t is: not only, and I say not only, the confounding desire to say precisely what I am and thinking and what I want to communicate, but also the patience to listen. The patience to listen is generally entirely your problem, but I forgive you. I’ve done it before and already understand all your motives. For example, I say, “It’s too bad you can’t be here and we can’t sip steaming coffee and stare at each other.” You might say, “What the hell are you talking about. Are you a crackhead? I don’t know if I ever want to have coffee with you.” Maybe I’m putting words your mouth. Do you have an answer? I imagine you will only say this silently in your head with only a slightly noticeable put off affect because your predisposition and expectations for normal social behavior won’t allow you to be silly and moderately uncomfortable sipping and staring, or even the proposal of such a comment for that matter(“It’s too bad you’re not here. We might have a grand time.”), not to mention being verbally blunt in responding to it, yes, what I said.

Hence the dilemma and apparent result is: one I can’t communicate, two you are a bad listener, and three we can’t get to know one another. …I suppose I need to keep trying, trying to unpack this profundity. Idiocy is: when I don’t try to communicate and wallow in lonesomeness, lonesome because I believe you will go on your merry way and don’t want to listen. Stop being an idiot. Idiocy is not listening. So what am I saying? Well, I’m very cool, in fact. I have a wicked sense of humor. I’m exceptionally good looking. I’m going somewhere in life, even though I’m smashed in a nook. I suppose I enjoy me. In fact, I think you should enjoy me too. I don’t mean wash my feet and sing my praises. I mean, “it’s too bad you’re not here and we can’t laugh and carry on and enjoy each other.” Idiocy is not paying attention to why someone, any particular random, named or unnamed person, is worth knowing. I’m an idiot for not enjoying your company. I regret it. Despite some of your appalling and gaping character deficiencies, all of which I plainly see, as if you were standing naked in a stark and contrasted desert and I was the massive eyeball of the sun watching on only you and your feeble body. Maybe the scenario isn’t exactly the same…. In fact, I admit I also have a few shortcomings (I think two), but on the whole, I enjoy me sitting in here in the nook. Do you? Where are you? You have redeeming value, and I regret not enjoying it, you. We’re idiots for not enjoying each other’s company. …I think I’ve unpacked it. =)

community college chronicled

2007-05-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

I’ve decided to write all through one of my classes to pass the time. It's the kind of class I've decided do as little as humanly possible and get an A. So, rather than blog every class period, I'm simply going to add to this one. fyi.

1/23/06
In my terrific boredom I have noticed in this classroom the curvature of two female bodies, considered the most unperverted description of the intimacy of two people in love (and how hard it is to portray the volume of wholesomeness in one kind of expression). I have heard everything this bland professor has said (without offering any break in his long, painfully thorough class) concerning sight and how I detect the hue of that one girl’s stomach when she persistently stretches because she too is bored and apparently very stiff. And I’ve listened inattentively to the vibration of his monosyllabic voice seemingly communicating his great interest in exactly what ‘it is’ I’m hearing due to his emanating sound waves. And I’m seated with my attention diverted, feeling as though his thick, slow sound waves are determined to interrupt to all my own extremely important thoughts and preoccupations. I’m getting up and leaving in 15 minutes.

1/30/06
“There Are Beautiful Women Everywhere”

I need to change my oil. I was late for class because parking is a nightmare. Since when did everyone move to Dayton to go to Sinclair? I learned something in class today…and some day the professor is going to stop class and ask me what I’m writing. I’ll tell him, “I’m writing about beautiful women everywhere.” But I won’t point to any, although, I do like the general demeanor of two girls here. I like there their faces and belly skin will always be a known stimulus. But it’s interesting because unless I can differentiate what I find physically attractive, most eligible women begin to look the same, particularly at the University. It’s not to say they are unattractive, but I’m also not giving it much thought. It doesn’t help sex appeal either when social mores suggest humping like rabbits. …I’ll look the other way. The probability is tragic. Here at this school if a beautiful woman is spied, she’s like a sun traversing our very dark universe. At other schools the fields are on fire because rich people are sending all their children. (It is a fact that wealth and beauty attract each other.) Their kids are lighting up and scattering in pairs over rural utopia like germinating beauty.
It seems most of the time beautiful women are nicer from a distance. They are either more alluring because I know nothing else about them, or if they get close (sitting next to me in class, a real person) they’re potentially alarming and I’m inadvertently more critical. I think we all do that…. In the event this “attractive woman” does get close because I want it and she wants it and the latent feelings of deep ‘I like you’ well up (like a million ton submarine coalescing from oceanic layers. Are you getting the imagery? I am like an ocean with a feeling inside called submarine. I don’t think submarines coalesce, but feelings do.)…then we run the whole gamut of why we’re interested and what we’ll invest. And so, trust is born, a small, baby bud.

2/1/06
I’m getting a head start on prewriting in my class, which has nothing to do with what I’m writing…because I’m doing it to distract myself. On the subject of writing, people identifying with shapes. If I say that I patiently walked behind a girl shaped like an obelisk…I’m saying she’s extremely tall, four sided, and tapers, which is not exactly what I mean. That’s the next subject, keywords. But first, the obelisk girl was more pear shaped, with long thin legs that fit like pegs under her pear bottom. This is good imagery. This description of shape is what a reader needs to picture me predictably going from class to class and getting slowed down behind three loudly chattering girls, one being pear shaped.
I think shape also relates mood. For instance, if I describe how indescribably good looking I am today, I’d suggest I’m not quite so arrogant and mention my low cut Converse, my average beige cords and only plaid shirt, and my conspicuous pea coat. The pea coat is probably the only thing worth mentioning because of its wide lapels, Tall and fitted cut, split coattail, and very tight weave. It is a navy pea coat (42L), and anyone who knows anything about such things knows “my shape” looks like a mariner in white converse. The mood I suppose is mild mannered and…swabbie. …color is obviously mood setting.
Keywords are…elemental and key, critical and also imperative. Basically without vocabulary I’m not humorous because you don’t understand me, nor am I sarcastic because I can’t communicate. All because I can’t articulate what’s inside me. Do you get it dear reader? Why not, damn it?!
I don’t understand why the gay man in my class never sits facing forward. He always looks like gravity is smashing himself into himself, like a ball…which is round and has no front to face forward. But he does have a face. I’ve seen it notice me. Last time a gay classmate hit on me I wasted no time and told him, “I write about beautiful women everywhere”. …A somewhat deflated ball that refuses to sit up straight.
I asked the girl who stretches in the front row if her husband was in the military. It’s the only thing I said to her today. I think I surprised her. It was rather out of the blue…. She said she wasn’t married. She was engaged and he was in the navy. I said, “oh”. It wasn’t that awkward, but almost. I’m extremely disarming.

3/17/06 The last week of classes.
I skipped my final exam in anatomy and physiology. I shouldn’t have done that…but I hadn’t been to class since the previous exam (six lectures). I hated lecture and think I’m smart enough to skip (if I read the book). Regardless, I missed the last exam and deserved to fail. I’ve never failed a class. I didn’t fail. I wandered aimlessly for 15 minutes trying to decide what I should do, and if I’m even responsible enough to shell out the money to register for pharmacology. (Fortunately it’s a distance learning class, so I can study however I want, and it’s about drugs.) After 10 minutes of consternation and contemplation of defenestration (all of those things), I happened upon a girl in my class in the foyer (vestibule is a good synonym for foyer) and I asked her, “Is the exam today?” Keep in mind I hadn’t been to class and my classmates may have noticed. I felt slightly self-conscious. She said, “No, it was Wednesday.” I said softly, “Oh…I haven’t been to class since the last test.” She looked at me and said, “Oh…my…goodness…” Then we didn’t say anything for two seconds. She was studying the material for our final and told me she was taking the test in a half hour in our professor’s office. I sort of sheepishly smiled and said, “She’s not going to like this,” and went looking for our dear professor. In my mind, I deserved to fail and I was going to be beggar, expecting a righteous finger to point me out the door. …I walked in her office door and she handed me the exam and said, “I was wondering when you were going to contact me.” I was dumbfounded. I took the test and got an 80. That’s because I stayed up most of the night “studying”…for the exam I didn’t know I skipped. As it happens, I had cumulative grades of three B minuses, one D, and one C in lab. (I’m not proud.) AND THEN I was given a 25 point extra credit exam over any material in all three A&P classes. I didn’t know about this exam. I scored 20 of 25 and that means (I somehow retained information from the other two A&P classes I took in 2000 and) 20 points were added to my 80 test score. I got a 100 on the final exam that I skipped. …all this means that my final class grade was 4 points short of a B, and my professor said, “You’re my lowest B. I’ll give it to you.” I was dumbfounded. This means a few things and I feel I’ve experienced grace….

On Wednesday, the day I didn’t know I was skipping my A&P final to prepare for my other final, I had a long conversation with my psyche teacher after the test. We’ve never talked. We only have impressions of each other. I told him where I am in life…because I needed to tell someone who’d comprehend…and didn’t know me. And this is more or less what he told me, “I’m convinced you have the brain to go all the way.” Wednesday was a monumental day for me. I’m going to move.

God be

2007-05-15T13:33:00.000-07:00

God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in my eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at my end, and at my departing.
(The Sarum Primer)

the only love letter i ever wrote. in the manner of oskar schell.

2007-05-15T13:02:00.000-07:00

...I'm in one of my favorite moods. It's the kind that's extraordinarily inventive. The kind that is extraordinarily childish. That's more than normal childish, which is predictable. You see, I'm the only one home. Like you, except my home is much bigger and I'm filling all the rooms, even though the light in my room is the only one on, anywhere. I'm in the kind of mood that imagines running under the full moon. I may be the only one running under the full and very
bright, glowing moon, but if you think about it, you might see me. And do you know? That I'm reading a new book, and I refuse to tell you what it is because I am determined to be secretive, BUT it's about a boy who's nine. And I know you don't know this either, but sometimes I'm in the habit of imitating the writing that I'm reading with my eyeballs. I'm a fairly slow reader and I wish that wasn't so, because then I'd read more books, but I think I am because I so thoroughly digest the book, not literally, figuratively. You see, I get in it. I pretend too, or imagine. And I often read to "know", if you will, that I'm not alone.

Tomorrow I'm taking off dp&l to fix my brakes. That's important to you because you know that I can and you're interested in the things I do even though you tell yourself you can live without me and you're not interested in some of the things I do because they're ordinary and you have your own life and so forget that I have to do things like change my brakes tomorrow. But I bet you also don't know that when it comes to making love, almost anywhere that you can make private is acceptable, and that much more exotic. And even if someone happened to notice, you can hide and enjoy yourself that much more because it's not like people don't know that other people make love, although they might not expect it in some of the places that other people might find exotic. I intend to be very unpredictable in this way. But that's sex and brake pads.

There are other things to do, like write a book, or change your brakes, or talk about life…you know the way you do when you're sitting on a swing or driving a car, because we spend so many hours everyday driving our cars. It almost seems a waste if not for the conversation. And I'm not in love. Love happens when two people say, "Hi, hello, what are you doing today? What do you mean you don't like that song? And, “Oh I have all kinds of problems to tell you about and pretend as if I'm not living real life alongside other people with real life problems." That's when you're in love. When you can pretend you're nine at a diner drinking coffee with a perfect stranger and only talking with you eyes. That's when you know.

Too many people can't imagine love unless it makes sense. Or maybe I'm only imagining and the best love story ever told happens in my head...between earth worms. That's kind of boring. Unless I decide to tell it to someone who thinks it sounds funny and wants to name one of the earth worms Herald and pretend with me that they do have exotic sex and fall deeply in love, and I'm not sure where the babies come from.

................

And I think you're probably still reading this because I know words get you and you like to write and also because I'm writing this brilliant letter/email. I should probably bring this to an end because you only have so much time to read and never time to reply, and I need to find another way to wind down and not be excited about anything. But I think you need to read my book. Blue Like Jazz and give it back to me. Because I like having the books that I like around me and right now you possess it and probably can't sit still to read it because sometimes you're consternated and stubborn. So read it before I buy another copy and pretend that you have my only copy and I want it back. Comprende? ...maybe I'll continue this email to another person as if I never left off because I think I can keep this up for a while. I'm not high and I've had zero wine. Goodnight.
jared

prose

2007-05-15T12:48:00.001-07:00

If I keep writing, will worlds unfold, the depths be revealed, my descriptions more piquant, and my heart more longing? Will the rain beating down find a rhythm in my head? Then my pen will be ‘blocked’ and the patter be a din. These letters I’ll retrace and cerebration will return. And the remnant of some thought will come wandering into view. She’ll say her name is Erin and “I have other thoughts here too”. “We’ll have a veritable deliberation with some authors you once knew.” I liked that thought, and asked if she might stay. “We’ll have pinot in the lobby and champagne on the way.” “I’ll drink to that,” she said, and linked her arm in mine. The gala was a smash; the rhythm was divine.

dark night of the soul

2007-05-15T12:47:00.000-07:00

Imagine a plain wooden chair and a boy seated in the dark. The air is oppressive but not so much that it belies a vast emptiness. The space has no determinable size, at least in height, and from somewhere above light exposes the boy, then dissipates in the gloom, distorting the spectral walls. They seem to move in the murk. In his mind's eye, he sits upright, though this Brobdingnagian place may not be, and not even the light filtering down seems to have a beginning. He stares vacantly. Beyond the glow every dimension seems a patchwork of gray, as if in an impressionist's painting. He gropes for the walls through this colloidal dark but finds no door. And oddly, the walls seem to be fabricated of books. There are no shelves. Most of them appear to be Bibles, Bibles of all sizes, languages, and translations. Among them are other literary works but most are Bibles. They protrude from stacks and rows in no particular order, and the boy begins to climb them.

discovery!

2007-05-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

for a long time i thought my favorite girls were middle borns. i don't think about it so much now...so you're worth a chance. perchance we meet on some winding way. i appreciate immensely a timely word. we don't have to talk about everything all at once, and i do get irritable if it's polite to be attentive and you're boring. i promise you won't know that. now...i like people who aren't afraid of vulnerability. i like randomness, including absurd, imaginative humor(e.g. beating the proverbial dead horse). i also like blurting things out. sometimes. imitation is always amusing. always. but it can make people mad. i like your wit. ...there's other things worth mentioning. i like observant people. opinions are something to talk about, and so are our theories (about money and behavior and learning and children and finding love and living love and the substance of all our time well spent). i like people like this. you be you and i'll be me, and probably...we'll get along famously. don't you want to get along famously? i, for one, look forward to getting along oh so famously. "people are to be discovered."