Notes to Self

Mmmmm... clarity.... tastes good.....

Remind me again that I need to write some stuff about authority. Such as:
- my personal kingship - sword/dream/need for community
- progression of the Shekinah glory from maybe creation to the pillar of cloud/fire to solomon's temple, to Ezekiel to the christmas star to the flaming tongues in Acts 2. Remember to talk about Christ in you the hope of glory & what that actually means.
- Authority is maybe when we are fully us & act out of the truth of who we really are, not who we're told we are.... stuff like that

Clarity - maybe - finally

My evening's gone sort of sideways from what was planned. Was hoping to get home early, blog & then run some errands. But flipped the order & so am just sitting down now to jot down some thoughts. Blogger seems to be unco-operative at present, so this may not make it onto the web until sometime later....

The advantage though of being a writer/creative is that a lot of the creative process happens in your head... so in the middle of all my shopping tonight, this blog entry has changed about 10 or 12 different times & what is listed here is much, much different than what it would've been if I'd sat down to write earlier in the day. Earlier in the night, it was all fuming & confusion.... now I'm actually pretty much at rest & feeling reasonably good about being me. Maybe it's just late & I'm tired from shopping/cleaning, but yeah, the angst is gone & I'm feeling free-er than I have in the last number of days.... I feel less hunted, less pursued by my fears & just more at peace....

.... the summary of it all (will maybe try to fill in details later, but this is abbreviated 'cause of the time of night): I live with the fear that deep down there is something wrong with me. That there is something unlovely & unlovable at the core of me & this leads to all kinds of other fears & neuroses. Ultimately, at the core of me (& maybe everyone) is a baby, child, teenager, adult who stands there asking "do you love me?" "do you want me?" And the fears & lies tell us/me that the answer will always, ever be 'no'....

.... and so, from living in this expectation, it's so easy to believe any voice that confirms the lies & so hard to believe any voice that speaks to the contrary.

Lately the struggle has been weeks of up & down emotions. The emotions have fluctuated wildly, even for me & I've been concerned that something's going wrong with me; that my tenuous grip on sanity is finally slipping... I've been looking at everything to figure out what's going wrong & how to fix it & I've been living in this fog, longing for clarity, but finding none... Got some stuff on Saturday night & thought I'd understood what was going on, but now I've got a completely different interpretation (which may still embrace the old thoughts, but that's for whenever the details get filled in)....

....the first real lift in this was Lisa's comments on my last blog post. I don't know what it is about me, maybe this is true for all people, or maybe just the needy ones, but there are moments where it changes everything when I realize that someone else (and especially people who I respect & whose journey I trust) is going through the same thing as I am. Suddenly I don't feel alone. I feel validated. I feel that I am somehow given permission to just 'be' instead of needing to fit in with my perceptions of what others consider 'normal' or 'together'.....

The second lift came 3/4 of the way through my day at work. Was listening to Skillet's new 'Comatose' album. I picked this up on my last visit (dual meaning there) to Christian Publications. I was mostly oblivious to the album, enjoying the crunchy guitars as I fought through sorting out scattered information in various spreadsheets. Part way through the album I hit this song:

Better Than Drugs - lyrics by John L. Cooper & Brian Howes
Feel your every heartbeat / Feel you on these empty nights / Calm the ache, stop the shakes / You clear my mind / You’re my escape / From this messed up place / ‘Cause you let me forget / You numb my pain / How can I tell you just all that you are / What you do to me

You’re better than drugs / your love is like wine / Feel you comin’ on so fast / Feel you comin’ to get me high / You’re better than drugs / addicted for life / Feel you comin’ on so fast / Feel you comin’ on to get me high

Feel you when I’m restless / Feel you when I cannot cope / You’re my addiction, my prescription, my antidote / You kill the poison / ease the suffering / calm the rage when I’m afraid / To feel again / How can I tell you just all that you are / What you do to me

You’re better than drugs / your love is like wine / Feel you comin’ on so fast / Feel you comin’ to get me high / You’re better than drugs / addicted for life / Feel you comin’ on so fast / Feel you comin’ on to get me high

Feel your every heartbeat / Feel you on these empty nights / You’re the strength of my life

You’re better than drugs / your love is like wine / Feel you comin’ on so fast / Feel you comin’ to get me high / You’re better than drugs / addicted for life / Feel you comin’ on so fast / Feel you comin’ on to get me high

I should hate this song. It's so much a 'poster child' song for so much of the christian ghetto/subculture. I mean, how often have we heard this message, "Jesus is better than drugs", "be high on life, not drugs", "Jesus can take away the pain".... there are so many empty platitudes thrown out there by Christian parents who are scared to death that they'll lose their kids to the big, bad world out there & they come up with these slogans in a hope that they'll make Jesus 'cooler' than the other subcultures found in the schools & society. Contemporary christian music & often times especially the 'alternative' Christian music is another example of this. The mass Christian marketing machine (which half the time is led by non-Christians) go, "Let's prey on the fear of Christian parents. Let's give their kids a band that sounds like a carbon copy of another 'secular' band, but they'll say 'Jesus' every three words instead of the f-word. And then let's charge twice as much for the CD 'cause they're a captive audience & sell the music in only Christian bookstores to help further consolidate our market share for this demographic & guarantee they'll keep coming back for more of the same schlock."

yeah, I'm not cynical at all, eh? & yeah, I maybe shouldn't be as cynical where Skillet is concerned. The fact that I bought the album shows that I at least kind of trust Skillet as a band with something to say. Every interview I hear with John Cooper I'm continually convinced that he is a really kind & genuine guy who really believes in what he's doing & does what he's doing to try to bring some kind of message of hope to hurting kids. This is a heart I can get behind & hope Skillet's music keeps getting out there for years to come & that good things come from it in spite of the things I despise with the Christian mass-marketing machines...

But again, this song should be the poster child for everything I despise with Christian media... but hearing the song today, I just started to weep & weep - full on tears & shaking, my shoulders slumping in exhaustion (again, another one of those awkward work crying moments). I've been tired today. Not enough sleep & really sore from skiing (my neck hurts - which I think is from the multiple falls I took on the hill). The stress of being afraid of losing my brain, the stress of being afraid of losing friendships has been weighing on me harder than I'd like to admit. And so the song speaks into the broken places & whispers, like Lisa's words, that I'm maybe more normal than I figure....

... my skin burns every time I hear Dar's words in the song "Teen for God" (see a number of posts below) about being a lightning rod, a radio station - about this place of where in giving yourself to God, you end up losing yourself & enter this near terrifying place where something else takes control.... the lines in the 'better than drugs' song about Jesus 'coming on so fast' has a similar effect - it's this place where you realize how much in love you maybe are & how much this removes your control of your own life, leaves you on this roller-coaster of unknowns where sanity & safety are never a guarantee & every moment is full of risk - this last bit sounds like my skiing experience - and yet (unlike skiing), it's something that gets (more or less) willingly submitted to.... all saints, all disciples sooner or later join with Peter in the heartbreaking confession of, "where else can we go?! only you have the words of eternal life"

The third & maybe final lift came in the Wal-mart parking lot after a few hours of shopping & writing & rewriting a blog entry in my head. I realized that the only thing significantly different about my emotional state lately was that I was having more happy moments & moments where the happiness/joy is approaching some near-ecstatic state (maybe not quite ecstasy, but pretty dang good). I've still got the random lows, the random moments of feeling lonely, empty, longing. The only difference is that now my 'ups' & so much more frequent & so much higher that it feels like I'm on a worse roller-coaster ride because the fluctuations are higher.

This is sort of good news... at least in my mind... I'm tempted to draw wave diagrams to explain, but yeah, we'll leave that... but yeah, I'm thinking that maybe this is a pretty good problem to have to deal with: I have to get used to being happy, really happy, more often... all in all, that's not a 'problem', that's a gift....

...and I just didn't see it until now...... so yeah, feeling pretty good about things right now...

P.S.

Sometime after the post last night, I remembered that I'd told God a few weeks back that He could take the reins of my emotions. At the time I wasn't quite so confident that I knew what I was doing with my emotions & so i figured I'd do the experiment of handing the emotions over to Him to see what He'd do with them....

... it's funny how that we (or at least I) always assume that when we surrender something to God that He will then take on on a safe & even path, always, ever upwards on this constantly improving road to the pinnacles of glory. We/I forget that no where in the Bible or life or anything does God promise to be safe, or to really even give us safety. He promises to protect, shelter, love us, but this may not be the same as our naive concepts of safety.

And so my emotional state fluctuates wildly over the last number of weeks. I find myself very 'in the moment' with what I'm experiencing. And in this, the 'sane' part of me freaks out 'cause I've been told somewhere that people shouldn't go up & down like this unless there's some kind of imbalance. But now that I think about it again, if I somehow believe that God took me at my word in giving Him the reins/control, then maybe living in the moment, experiencing the full weight of whatever emotional response to the moment that there is, maybe this is exactly where I need to be....

People pleasing

Realized tonight that I'm falling into the trap again of evaluating myself based on my perceptions of how people see me. Starting to ease back into community again is weird for me. I pulled away from people & community & the church, well, for many reasons, but partly it was to help get my head on straight & get me to the place of being happy being me. period. It has been a long process of learning to live with the identity of "the beloved of Christ" & realize that it doesn't matter how I'm viewed, this is an identity that (in reality) cannot be shaken... but yeah, starting to wonder if in slipping back into community, I've traded in that for the hopes that people will like me... (and they do, I'm just paranoid).

So yeah, maybe the up & down I've been feeling with my internal emptions is just readjustment of getting used to being around people again -- though I'm sure it's lots more than that. There's a sense of upheaval internally, like the continents of my soul are moving again, & I don't know what it all means or where it's going, but I feel change in me & this rather uncontrolled sense of up& down emotions (which has been worrying me a bit again), is maybe just a part of that & months from now I'll be able to look back & go, "oh yeah, that was what I was learning here, I don't understand why i didn't see that before.... ". But that little observation will be some time later...

John talks about how that anyone can say they love God, but they're liars if they say this & then don't love their brother. I think there is a reality that our spirituality is shown so much in the arena of human interaction, how we treat others. It's easy for me to hang on to my 'identity in Christ' when I'm not around other people, when I don't feel others expectations on me, or have pretty girls comment on how my collection of G.I. Joes & not-so-clean house are likely 'blocking' female relationships in my life (which they may be for all I know, but it's not the point :) )

Today was an interesting identity day: Had my performance review at work. My management used it as a time to provide 'constructive criticism' for me. Mostly it showed the lack of relationship between management & myself & I felt very much like they hadn't "seen" me in the year... I could've let the review mess me up, it was only a slightly positive review & I was sort of expecting more after the year I had last year. The review bothered me, but it was mostly just one more confirmation that I'm not made for this working world of engineering....

...then I had my chance to give a review to another employee & spent a lot of time talking with him about his core person vs. how he's perceived by what he does & how he could manage people's opinions/expecatations of him. If I was a fly on the wall listening to me talk, it would've either been a really disjointed conversation or something with a fair bit of wisdom in it... hard to say & hard to say what got across to the guy. But mostly it was advice saying that you can kill yourself for the company & maybe have people respect you more, or you can just live your life, run your own race, play your own game & let people think what they want to think.....

...and yeah, I've been worried about how others view 'my race'... & should stop that 'cause it's silly....

... so yeah, easier said here than done in the face of people, but it's something to be aware of & to work through, like everything else.

Was thinking that the next month is coming up soon & I want to make more changes in my life in Feb.... hrm, what to change?

Another interesting identity bit: Was killing time before going to my roommate Dan's birthday supper & wandering into Christian Publications down town.... (local Christian retailer) & yeah, wandered around for a tiny bit & left not that much after. On the way out, I just had the sense that there is nothing there for me anymore. I used to spend a lot of time there - haven't been there in a long time & it'll likely be longer before I'm back. Just being there made me see afresh that my tastes have changed, in music, in books, in culture. I'm wanting to escape the traps of drab & choking christian suburbia - the safety of our christian culture bubble... the stuff that really speaks to me now comes from wherever (like last night, listening to a Sufi poet) &, I'm not saying that christians don't speak to me 'cause they definitely do. It's that the mass-market Christianity, the safe & nicely packaged stuff, doesn't appeal at all to me anymore....

...anyhow, suffice it to say, this was an interesting revelation & for at least a number of minutes after this realization, I felt the fog over my head lift for a while.

blah, blah blah... that's the observations for the day.

Shared voices

Well, yeah, I should likely go to bed instead of writing, but I've gotten into a habit of ending my day with this, so maybe it's good to continue.... the juxtaposition of this being my private thoughts in a public forum is starting to get to me 'cause as I write more, more of the internals come out, the good & the not so good & I'm starting to fall into the trap of wanting to be impressive again... I sort of want people to like me & to think I'm like, maybe sane, & maybe a really great guy & as I spin off into really talking through the stuff that goes on in my heart, well, I'm not so sure I can claim sanity or having it together anymore....

...maybe one day I'll fully shuffle over to being 100% convinced that I'm loved as I am... honestly, I'm way closer to that being a reality than it was in the past, but I still struggle with it.

And yeah, I find today that I have internal rumblings that just can't be shared in a public forum... so yeah....

... got more sleep last night & was more alert & happier today. Car got fixed. The 'sway bar' on the car broke in half. I didn't know what a 'sway bar' was & still am not so sure, but $500 later, my car doesn't make the nasty falling apart noises anymore, so I'm happy....

...or at least I was... after work, got out on the road to kill time before stuff got started at the community house. Went to A&B sound to look for music from artists from the Before the Music Dies videos. Picked up a CD by the Roots & another by David Gray (isn't on the video but gets mentioned). Saw some of Erykah Badu's CDs, but I'm already working through one of hers that I found at the 2nd hand shop (along with a Doyle Bramhall II CD). They didn't have any of Doyle's CD in the store & this sort of left me vaguely upset.... in the B4MD documentary, you really get to see this guy's story of moving from being the heir apparent to obscurity & depression & the walking-death of an artist who has lost hope, vision & belief in themselves & then you see him built up at the end of the show & receiving accolades from legends like Eric Clapton... you see in his story that he is, as Erykah describes, one of the 'first kind' of artists - one who experiences pain to do what he does. The first artists are the ones where their art nearly kills them. They have to create, but no one gets it & so they spend a tremendous amount of time in life-support - this near-death place where they feel so desolate in their creativity & then get these moments of inspiration only to have it crash down again & then they keep trying & keep waiting for that wave of inspiration to hit again & yeah, they persevere through it, not 'cause they really want to, it's just that something inside drives them on & they can't resist it....

& since the car was fixed, I could now listen to the radio, so had it tuned into CKUA to catch some more independent, listener supported radio. On the drive over to the community house, I caught a piece that was interviewing Joni Mitchell. As part of it she made mention of how she has now 45 open tunings that she uses in her songs & she describes how the complexity of her chords are made to mirror the complexity of her emotions. "My joy", she says, "is never fully complete. There is always a little dissonance in it." (or something to that effect, she says it better)....

... I missed large chunks of the next 10 minutes of the drive thinking about that & realizing how much that one statement 'fits' me & explains things in me. I feel not so alone in this because, hey, Joni seems to have the same complex emotions apparently - joy that is always touched by a tear (to borrow a line from David Ruis), sadness that is never complete despair, always a thread of hope running through it....

...but what this resulted in was that I was in sort of psuedo-depression by the time I hit the house. It's odd lately. I've maybe been thinking too much, I've been in a low mood pretty much every time I've been at the community house (or my house for that matter, I guess)... but yeah, c'est la vie....

In leaving the house, I heard this poem by Rumi read over the radio and again, it somehow explained a part of my spirituality that I have not been able to find words to describe for years:

Love Dogs by Rumi

One night a man was crying,
Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,

"So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?"
The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
"Why did you stop praising?"
"Because I’ve never heard anything back."

"This longing you express is the return message."
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
that whining is the connection.
There are love-dogs
no one knows the names of
Give your life
to be one of them.

This for me reflects the power of art. I've felt for years that my spirituality, my prayers, my heart are defective 'cause I'm not getting that answer, that response from the heavens. That was the torture for me at the gathering was this sense that everyone else was getting a 'response' from God except for me & from it, I felt very, very isolated & like God didn't like me... That's been mostly worked through (I'm maybe still bitter in some places), but for the most part, my spirituality has grown through that & I really like God & am less mad at Him & more caught in just longing for him.

So tonight, listening to this poem read over the radio, my eyes well up with tears & it almost feels too good to be true & so I resist the reality, that maybe I am not defective & aberrant, maybe I know something that some medieval poet knew & maybe if he knew it, too, maybe I'm not so alone/odd...

It's amazing how healing connection is, how much it helps to hear someone tell a story & you feel like they are speaking your story back to you. It is so freeing to feel understood, even for a moment.... we long to be known... by someone, anyone. We most of all long to be known by those closest to us, but there are days where we're OK with connecting with a stranger, so long as someone 'knows' us...

...and yeah, maybe this is why I get to share my less than impressive stories here. Why I get to articulate struggle & fumbling & searching for something which I don't know what it is exactly, nor where to find it, but I'm looking....

Anger & loss

Well, for a while there I was figuring it would be a quick post tonight. Figured I could sum up the whole day in one word:

Snarl!!

Woke up tired, dragged into work at 9 & was met by a flood of activity. I was chased off my feet & running constantly until 12:40 when I was able to call a couple of friends briefly & then back on the run until 4:30 with a tiny bit of food crammed in there.

It was a day full of dealing with twits. Kept getting last minute things from managers saying "oh, I'm supposed to put this together, but you've been doing the work, so can you put this together for me & oh, by the way it's due today or in a few hours". Then ended up in a meeting where this guy wasted 45 minutes of my life by going on & on about how this one thing was wrong & the process was wrong & this & that was wrong & needed to be fixed. After 37 minutes of presenting roadblock after roadblock & finally convincing the room to completely revamp the way something was done, he then decided that, while the new process was the 'ideal' process in his mind, that it was going to take way too much work to implement in the short timeframes we're dealing with & so we ought to just stick with the status quo.

... the funny thing was I could see this coming within the first 2 minutes of him opening his mouth. I'm looking at him thinking he's just doing this as an ego boost that he's 'fighting the man' & changing the process. So I tried to tune him out. Got a paper reviewed while he was going blah, blah, blah... but then ran out of work to do & was thinking about trying to get away to call a friend about other friends & this guy would not shut up. So I contemplated threatening him in the middle of the meeting, or challenging him to present solutions instead of problems, but figured that might look like harassment. Then I thought about catching him in the hallway after the meeting & beating the crap out of him, but figured that would also likely get me fired. Then spent the rest of the meeting contemplating the physics of picking up one of the meeting room tables & hitting him with it... Figured I could probably use my midsection to leverage the table into the air & could then get enough moment to sort of throw/drop it on him. Maybe couldn't actually use the table like a big hammer, but I could hopefully hurt him with it....

...but yeah, I restrained myself (sort of).

...I hate myself when I'm angry... Maybe I've seen the destructive effects of anger & temper & so try to lock up my anger & protect the world from my destructive tendencies... though maybe this is just as unhealthy... (hitting the dude with the table still sounds like good therapy to me). But when I get angry like I did today I just get all twisted up inside & feel like a pretty horrible person. I go really quiet & get real prickly & stiff & am really short with people. I feel justified in doing this with last-minute-task managers, but it always seems to hit a broader circle. And then I'm just awkward with friends, too 'cause they can tell I'm a wreck, but I don't want to launch into the long vent with them, but am desperate to talk to someone sane & so I just end up in this awkward place of aching to talk while being totally silent......

... I am ashamed of my anger in some ways.

So the whole day was spent feeling a tad on edge. Went to Jesus Loves You Society right after work (with a quick stop off at the comic store on the way). The anger at the outside world had basically moved inside by then & I was just mad at myself for being mad & not more 'mature' or something to be able to just brush it all off. So just busied myself with tasks at JLYS; washing dishes, busing tables, serving food. RJ & Andy caught me in the middle of rushing around & prayed for me. Part of the prayer was received, part wasn't so much. Some of the prayer got 'tai chi'ed back at them 'cause I was doing the "I'm a sucky human being 'cause I've been mad all day - I don't deserve nice prayers" thing & was all rushing off to follow 'task' instead of receive grace & love...

...but in the end, ended up being drawn away from tasks by just conversations & hanging out with people. Got to play catch/pig in the middle with Jason & Jim (two of the other volunteers) & one of the kids. She had this cool squishy spiky glowing ball thing that eventually broke & so I got to analyze how they built the electronics in it (nice simple but ingenious design)....

...it's funny how things like service & especially kids can help liberate you from your own demons & general poopie-headedness... kids are just really good people with a rich, genuine acceptance. You hang out with them & play games with them & they think you're fantastic. & yeah, I'm not sure tonight why there is a difference for me with that than the freely offered acceptance & love from RJ & Andy...

But maybe in the end it's about forgetting yourself. In playing around with the kids it was all about just being goofy & entertaining the kids & enjoying the game, the moment... and in that there's a whole lot less space to worry about evaluating whether or not I deserve to be on planet or not or whether I'm a good person with rough parts or a bad person with occasional flashes of good... in forgetting myself, it's just about being.

So yeah, feeling kind of better now. The drive home I just sort of felt the cost of the day, the sum of the losses internally.... had tears there that I'm just sort of too tired to cry.... But yeah, will try bed here shortly & call it a day. Try again tomorrow. At least I'm taking the car in tomorrow & so hopefully they can fix it & that's one less thing on my mind....

Reflections on a day

Started the day far too early to attend a meeting that didn't last long & I had no input to. But remembered the 'experiment" - the chance to see God in the middle of my workday.... & honestly wasn't much where I was actively aware of presence. Did have once incident though - was wandering through the office looking for someone (which seems to be what takes up a large majority of my days lately). While walking past one of the offices, I was struck with by the Edge's opening guitar riffs from "Where the Streets Have No Name". The music impaled me like a spear, piercing my abdomen & stealing my breath away. The sounds came like little ripples of joy on a carrier wave of beauty. (engineering note on the metaphor: The human voice, most sound, isn't at a frequency that will carry over long distances & so to transmit it over radio waves, they use funky math principles to mix in the frequencies of voice/music in with another wave, a carrier wave, that is at a much higher frequency & will travel those long distances. At the other end, the carrier wave gets stripped away (again through funky math stuff) leaving only the original sounds.... )

Anyhow, for a moment there had a flash of wonder & revelation similar to last nights (though completely unique & different if that makes sense - similarily overwhelming, total different experience). Had to choke the tears of being overwhelmed back for a bit, but managed to hold them in (crying at work isn't maybe as profession,
though I'm sure it happens).

(one more geek moment: figured out more or less how to convert a sequence of 4 bytes into the number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970. Though I seem to be off by about 7 1/2 hours somewhere.)

There was another brief incident of 'encounter' on the drive home (so don't know if that counts). Because the car's got the wonky wheel thing going on, I've got the radio off so I can listen for the metal shearing & get a few seconds warning if the wheel falls of (yes, over active imagination coupled with being a professional worrier is a bad combination). To fill the silence was sort of singing (half way) U2/Green Day's 'The Saints Are Coming" & contemplating the lyrics & got thinking about the lines "but the shadows still remain since your descent" & thinking about the darkness in the world & was caught by two deep sobs while merging onto deerfoot. Managed to breathe them through & it stayed at only 2 or so... but yeah. (Another aside: was typing something today about 'Deerfoot trail' & instead typed 'Deerfoot trial'... which is maybe kind of accurate).

Tonight was really scattered. I had a night to myself. Lately I've had nights to myself when I've planned for it, chosen to take a moment to myself. Tonight it wasn't so planned. I got home, realized no one had called & I hadn't called anyone. Not a bad thing, but I didn't know what to do with myself. So surfed the net, put G.I. Joe's on the figure stands I'd just gotten in the mail. And sat down to some leftovers & some of my mom's homemade buns & jam. Mostly a filler meal & my tummy felt off afterwards. Sat down to watch part of the 'special features' of the Before the Music Dies video & ended up mesmerized again & watched through the whole shooting match. Lots of more great stuff. Feel strongly that the community house people should watch through Questlove's extended interview segment (if they haven't already). Think there's some great stuff in there.

In the xm radio interview segment, Joel Rasmussen said this which I found interesting:

"I think probably the single most surprising thing.. feedback that's come out of the making of this was when I was screening the film for a group of people here in Austin. There was a woman who came up to me afterwards who said, this film tells the story of engineering. And I just looked an her & I didn't have a frame of reference for what she was saying. And she said, let me explain. In engineering historically engineering companies looked at engineers as their assets. they would develop them, they were concerned about their long term careers & they would sort of guide their growth & their development. And then in the '80s and the 90's when engineering firms began to become consolidated and they became public companies, they no longer had the time or the interest & so engineers were no longer viewed as an asset they were viewed as a commodity. "

What struck me as odd is that I listened to this & as an engineer, I nodded my head in total agreement of what this lady has said. Companies talk a lot about personal development, career development, about their people being their biggest asset, and the stories are almost believable. You see that they have all these great policies & programs - but when you start to try to make use of them, there are all these catches & clauses & hoops to jump through.... and all the time you find you're being bought & sold just like any other slave.... (a well paid slave, mind you, but still...)

But what struck me as odd was my response. Just a nod, no tears. Here I am watching the stories of these artists/musicians & weeping either in sorrow at the injustices they face or with joy as they find their places of creative freedom. I grieve the slavery of the artist & celebrate any moment where the shackles start to fall off.... But yet when someone talks about my own slavery, I just nod in acquiescence that, yep, that's what's going on... this is just the way things are....

... so made me wonder what's up with that? Maybe it's that 'engineer' is a very secondary (or buried) identity for me. Maybe it's that I don't care about engineering. Maybe it's that I don't see hope for engineering. Maybe it's that I don't tie 'engineering' in with such a deep soul connection to people.

But made me wonder if maybe it's easier to fight for someone else's freedom than your own. For my artist friends, I'm thinking about all these strategies to 'help' them with their struggle & work to 'fight the man' on their behalf. Most I'll likely never do. Somewhat from laziness, somewhat 'cause I know I'll annoy my artist friends with the futile attempts to 'help'... but for my own 'bondage', I've got nothing. Didn't even take a moment to think of anything. Again, maybe it's just that I've been spending the last 4 months to 13 years trying to figure out how to get out of engineering, so maybe I'm not going to the 'well' for answers 'cause the well is dry.

But made me wonder again how content we (or mostly me) am with our chains & what stops us from reaching for something more....

... the rest of the evening continued it's disjointed pace. Hit the used CD store at 8:20, grocery store at 8:40 & then came home to cook which brings me to, uhm, now. Just waiting for the food to cool so I can pack it into little containers for lunch.....

... thinking about the last number of posts, the last few weeks of my life, I wonder whether I'm just making all this #$@% up... Maybe I'm not really encountering God. Maybe I'm not getting insights. Maybe I'm just faking this writing stuff... Maybe none of it matters. maybe it's all in my head & I'm just deluding myself that life is getting better, that I'm having fun, dreaming again... finding community... maybe the cycle repeats again, something new & fresh comes to my life, I obsess about it & pour my everything into it, then later get disillusioned, move on, turtle & hide by self til I drive myself crazy & then venture out one more time to try again....

... maybe the emotions, the senses of beauty/joy are just chemical imbalances brought on by years of not enough sleep. Maybe my ticker's bad & I'm living on borrowed time & will expire soon... maybe I'll die happy in this moment (or at least with an illusion of happiness)....

The wonky bits about life is that you're just never sure where you stand.... the sands of time keep shifting under you, sucked between your toes by the great undertow of a vast & endless cosmos filled mostly with 'nothingness'... you can't hang onto the moments of where everything feels 'right' (& thankfully the moments where everything goes to crap disappear that quickly, too)... and so we're left like every other person on the planet. You trust your eyes, your ears, the physical senses. You trust your heart, your mind, your gut & you rely on those things all the while holding all of them in suspicious knowing that your body is deteriorating slowly & there are sicknesses that could take away any of the things you trust in in a heartbeat.... maybe you just try to surf the whole thing, look for that one big crest, try to ride it as far as you can before it falls in on itself & you're caught in the washing machine of water & silt.... & then you try again on the next wave....

& so you try to trust that the moment you're in is where you need to be, where you're made to be.... you hope that the story so far has led you here & the author has some place to lead you next... You either try to choke down the fears or (as I just did) speak them into the wind, name each one &, in the naming, steal their power over you... Once they're named, they seem to be as fragile as you are and hence not such a big looming threat....

...and you choose, again, to get up the next day, stare oblivion in the face & say, "I will attempt to live today, I will seek love today, and joy, beauty, truth & hope.... and seek freedom in whatever that means" These are the days (to steal a metaphor from "Sleepless in Seattle") that you keep reminding yourself to breathe & hope for the day where you don't have to remind yourself anymore....

Jacob's Ladder

Had imagery in my prayers tonight of 'Jacob's Ladder' resting over the community house.

The story of Jacob's ladder is in Genesis 28. Isaac, son of Abraham, has two sons, Esau & Jacob. Jacob is the swindler & cheats Esau out of the father's blessing/inheritance. Esau is enraged & swears to kill Jacob & so Jacob flees for his life. In the early days of Jacob's flight, he pulls up some rocks for pillows & falls asleep & in his sleep he dreams of a ladder/staircase reaching into heaven & the angels of God ascend & descend the ladder/stairs in between the heavens & the earth... & it is in this place that God speaks over Jacob the same blessing given to his father Isaac & his grandfather Abraham. God the Father gives Jacob this unearned blessing, the blessing handed down through the generations of patriarchs to this most undeserving one.

After having this vision, Jacob awakens & fear & names the place 'Bethel', the house of God (Hebrew 'Beth' = house, "El" = God) because, as he says, "God was in this place & I didn't realize it".

Fast forward a thousand years or more. In John chapter 1, there are two brothers Philip & Nathaniel. Philip sees Jesus & believes that he is the Messiah, the promised deliverer/saviour & goes rushing to tell his brother Nathaniel. Nathaniel is skeptical, but tags along to check things out. When Jesus sees him, he starts to basically recite Nathaniel's life back to him & amazed by this, Nathaniel starts to profess that Jesus must be the son of God to know all these things. Jesus replies to him & says:

"Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, for this you believe? You will see greater things than these..... Truly, truly, I say to you, Hereafter you will see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." (John 1:50 & 51)

The Bible interprets itself. This phrase about "the heaven's open & the angels ascending/descending" is an exact quote of the Jacob's Ladder passage. What Jesus is saying is that He is Jacob's Ladder, He is the ladder/stairway leading into heaven...

& yeah, anyhow, not sure how this applies to anything, but it's just a neat little connection piece that may have some relevance somewhere.

Nite.

God in the Mundane//Weird drive home

Haven't been getting enough sleep lately & likely won't again tonight.

I awoke late. Was hoping to get up early & rush the car into the shop 'cause the right front tire is making weird noises when it gets bumped or I make left turns. Not happy noises & I am sort of hoping the wheel doesn't fall off anywhere crowded.... but was all zombified & didn't get up early like I'd plan.

Spent the day in a bit of a fog. Spent most of the day moving my desk to the new spot at work (as part of the new role, get a new desk) & got everything unpacked & set up. A little bit of other work, but mostly just kind of stewing in nothingness & the zoned out stare of tiredness & general unhappiness.

Went over the community house after working a bit late & goofed around with Connor for a bit & then sat down to an absolutely stellar meal. I'm not a huge salmon fan, but this stuff was mouthwateringly delicious glazed salmon... sooooo good... accompanied by a blend of couscous & vegetables (sweet potatoe & chickpea & mushrooms & other stuff) & great garlic bread. A feast for kings & queens....

...after the meal decided to help with the dishes & chose to wash 'cause then I didn't have to figure out where things went in the kitchen. Manual labour is a great place for me to be alone with my thoughts.... sometimes this is good, sometimes bad, depending on where the thoughts go. I sort of went back into my funk (not the musical kind, that would've been cool.... but the melancholy) & spent some time trying to analyze it all, to understand why I felt unhappy, or dull or just out of it. Figure it's likely the sleep thing.

But got to thinking about people like Rich Mullins & Brother Lawrence who talk about how things like washing dishes are a spiritual discipline, of how these are the places to meet God & thought I'd test out their theories. So, stopped asking God why I was so down & switched to asking something akin to how is this a spiritual moment?

& it happened almost instantaneously. I looked up, which I hadn't done the whole time & saw the valance/ the blinds/curtains (whatever it's called) at the top of their kitchen window & it was this crocheted scene of all these little houses & suddenly my mind snapped to thoughts of how it was beautiful, of how long it must've taken someone to do that, maybe it was someone's grandmother, something passed down, maybe it's made by hands in china or india. It reminded me of small towns in winter & grain elevators & snow falling & small communities....

...& suddenly I was overwhelmed by this sense of beauty, of how lucky I was to be alive, of just how good God is & life is & yeah, it was gorgeous.... Looking back now, it sort of feels like being a shepherd in bethlehem on a silent night when suddenly the angels appeared singing 'glory to God in the highest & on earth, peace, good will to all people'....

... & so the divine snuck into the mundane, or rather, the peacefulness of the mundane opened my heart to the divine's continual presence... & yeah, after that, I was just very aware of the 'now', the movement of my hand in the water, the feeling of liquid, suds, the dishes & cloth, the slow movement of scrubbing... just this place where all of the senses sort of felt heightened & I became aware of the 'now' instead of trapped in thoughts of past or future...

...so yeah, great moment.. which led in to great prayers.... a friend prayed a prayer about God in our work or something (was a fantastic prayer, wish I remembered it), but sort of felt challenged/encouraged by the silent prompting of the unexpected voice to maybe try this out at work tomorrow & try to look for there to be a spirituality in my work, to see if the divine can break into the engineering day... So that's my little experiment for tomorrow (so long as I get enough sleep & remember to look for it....)

& then yeah, had the odd drive home:

Got to 16th & 12Ave & this lady comes walking up to the car, flagging me down. I roll down the window, she starts in:
"Excuse me, do you have the time?"
"it's 10 to 10"
"Thanks. uhm, if I paid you five bucks would you drive me up to crowchild trail"
"uhm, well, just get in, I'm heading that way anyhow."
"Great" - she gets into my car & I start to drive.
"Actually," she says, could you drive me over to 14th street".
"OK"
"So what are you doing tonight? Just driving around?"
"Nope. Just coming from a friend's house & just on my way home"
"Oh. well I'm looking for a man to buy me a birthday beer."
"How's that going?"
"Not too well.... Do you want to buy me a birthday beer?"
"Uhm, no. I'm just looking to head home."
"Oh, well, just drop me here," (I start to pull over), "I need to get some dope...uhm... I mean I need to see a friend. Oh, just keep going."
"OK.... so how's your birthday going?"
"Not so great. Are you sure you don't want to buy me a birthday beer?"
"Yes"
"Can I buy you a beer?"
"Uh, no, I'm just looking to head home.... (silence).... so how long have you been in Calgary?"
"Three years. I'm from Toronto... How did you know I wasn't from Calgary?"
"I didn't"
"well you asked 'how long I'd been in Calgary?', did you know I'm not from Calgary?"
"uhm, no, I just well, most people that live in Calgary aren't originally from Calgary. I'm not originally from Calgary, I..."
"Oh, I'd love you forever if you'd turn left at those lights"
"OK... (turn left)... where are we going?"
"Oh, just go up there & turn right at the stop sign....Do you have a girlfriend?"
"uhm, no, not at the moment".
"So what are you doing tonight, you've just got the time to drive pretty girls all over the place?"
"Well, I uh, just try to be nice to people every once in a while"
"Oh. So you're sure you're not looking for a good time tonight."
"Uhm, no"
"Well that's too bad. Just let me out here. Thanks. goodbye."
"Uhm, bye." (car door starts to shut) "Be safe"... (door closes)

Yeah, weird..... whatever that was I totally missed it.

Before the Music Dies

"Music has been the language of our culture. Words & sounds that come from the street & the barrio, from fields & churches, from coffee shops to arenas. Our music defines us as Americans. This fertile land of immigrants, slaves & dreamers has created more forms & styles of music than any before it.....Whether a song of passion or pain. A voice of patriotism or a scream of protest. American music has never been bound by category or cowed by rules. Our rich & often tumultuous history has meant a continuous reinvention of who we are; often expressed through our music..... As one musical form emerged on our cultural dance floor, another cut into the fray determined to make it's new voice heard. Blues howled & boomed. The powerful & articulate Jazz stepped onto the floor & everyone took notice. Rock & roll had been criss-crossing the nation in a dusty van with country & western & they, too, joined the party, eager to show off the stuff that they'd both learned from gospel. The dancers all parted when the loud and rebellious punk arrived and the dance floor heaved again as hip-hop, the loudest & flashiest guest yet, arrived on the scene with a slam & a thump heard around the world.."

So begins the "Before the Music Dies" documentary (see http://www.beforethemusicdies.com) created by Andrew Shapter & Joel Rassmussen. It's a powerful vision of the current state of the music industry & music as a whole.

I played hooky from work one day last december. I called in sick. Wasn't entirely physically sick. Didn't feel 100%, but was more just sick of working than physically sick. In the middle of this day, I happened to be driving my car & happened to hear someone on CKUA radio mention this video & thought it was something that my friend Andrea, being an artist & musician, would want to see & would be the perfect thing to complete her birthday/christmas present. Long story short, it came in, made it into the gift, she liked it & loaned it to me to watch.

I had a quiet afternoon with an appointment getting canceled (get well soon, my friend) & so decided to retreat to my house to have lunch & watch the video. Made for a fantastic afternoon. Watched it mesmerized for an hour and a half. Sometimes laughing, sometimes stupified, most times crying through the whole thing - sometimes with gentle tears, others with birth-pang like gasps (yeah, that's a weird image that I'll have to explain later)... I had sort of thought about watching this either with Andrea or others in the community house, but it's maybe good I watched it on my own 'cause then I was free to express the emotions of the moment....

... so much good stuff in it that I'm going to have to watch it again, just to hope to absorb it all. They paint a picture of American music as being this voice that came out of slavery & bondage, a voice that grew through spirituality & just calls out to all that will listen.... they paint pictures of the battle between art & commerce... they show how the commercial side of the music business is being crippled, is crumbling & how there is a new face of art & music emerging from the grassroots. The whole thing is very revolutionary (i.e. starting a revolution, rebellion, overthrow) & whispers/shouts of things to come. It felt very much like listening to the prophetic voice heralding the coming of Renaissance II. (which is maybe a farcical imagery that will never happen, but if it does, you heard it here first (or whispered on the wind), & if it doesn't happen, well, at least it's a beautiful dream.....)

If you have any heart for music, the arts, creativity, passion, love for life, I very much recommend the video. Will likely have to post more after watching it the second time.

Sons & daughters

The church I attend held a mass baby-dedication today. There's a lot of young families attending & a lot of new babies & so it was sort of a mass free-for-all of praying for kids & families & blessing children & parents. Like anything with kids, it was not on schedule, chaotic & incredibly beautiful all at once.... It was carefree & weighty at the same time... there was a huge 'release' of destiny in that room, parents (& perhaps God behind the parents) whispering/speaking their hopes & dreams over these children. Prayers for their lives now & lives to come, calling out in these young lives weighty things like justice & healing & joy.

Destiny is a hard thing for us as humans. We love to make our own way & be masters of our own fate. And this is very much part of our existence. But there is also this thing of 'destiny' of 'calling', this place where sometimes we wonder if our paths are maybe laid out for us before we were ever born. Each of these kids, like their parents before them, will need to live out this paradox, embracing both aspects & also holding both with a certain degree of suspicion... They will be shaped by the people, the community & culture around them. They'll be shaped by their genetics... and in the end there is some x-factor, some unknown thing that will make them unique, somehow not a product of anything around them, but somehow a 'one-off' - a one of a kind miracle of live & individuality that will never been seen again on planet earth....

...and so for this & a multitude of other reasons it's good to watch, to bear witness, to the lives of these young ones. Watching these young lives you get to see the rawness of a person in development. You get to see a personality forming before anyone has had time to put the 'hooks' in; before anyone has had time to shape them into some societal ideal of what a child should look like, do, act, function...

...there is great wisdom hidden in children. So much to learn. & this really comes only from time spent with them witnessing the growth of their young lives.

Got to spend time watching a friend entertain one of the kids today. The little guy had a dump truck & handed it to my friend & she held it out for him to play with. He looked the truck over, looked at my friend, then back & the truck & then started, with little hands & unsure movements, began to spin the wheels on the truck. First one axle, then the other, then bringing both hands up to try to spin both at once. He worked away at this for a while before heading off to gum a bagel, later to take the un-eaten pieces & make a game of placing them in & out of my hands....

... I watched this in fascination & thought about what it must have been like for the very first man who discovered the wheel (or the first woman, we don't know who figured that one out originally). What must it have been like? Did he/she discover circles first? Did they see logs rolling or stones & then try to shape a wheel from that concept? How many times did they try & fail before they found the concept of wheel & axle that we take for granted today in our world of cars & trucks; vehicles & toys....

.. and it just makes you think that this little boy is coming in this same sense of wonder. This is maybe for him the first idea of wheels, of rolling, is dawning in his young brain... and there is so much more to discover. Every moment, everything touched, eaten, felt, seen, heard, all is a new experience for this one, brand new & full of freshness & awe....

...and as an adult we so need this. We forget awe, we forget wonder. We forget to marvel at the world around us, at just the rush of being alive & what a great gift it is, that it's a ludicrously wild chance that we should be given even a moment on this planet to experience any of this...

This, if nothing else, is the wisdom that come from childhood. It makes all things new again (which is maybe part of why Jesus refers to 'conversion', placing faith in Christ, as the 'second birth' - where we are again plunged into wonder of seeing the world through new eyes).

The only other place I've heard about this renewed sense of wonder (beyond being with children & religious experiences) is marriage. Mike Mason describes in his book "The mystery of marriage" that somehow marriage is like finding 'Eve' again - that somehow the groom finds these places of where he sees his bride & seeing her is like seeing the first woman, like seeing woman for the very first time.... and it's this sense of wonder & childlikeness which often helps carry a marriage through the early days & must be returned to over & over & over again....

... we get old without wonder... life without wonder chokes us... we die a slow & painful death of boredom.... our lungs asphyxiate, die from lack of fresh air, with all the deadness & monotony of a world without wonder. Maybe this is why change is the one of the only two constants in our world (the other is God's love - there may be more, but those are the two I'm sure of right now)... change, as much as we may resist it, keeps things new, keeps shaking out the cobwebs of our lives... gives us hope for something more... something different... something new....

...but wonder can be cultivated even in the 'same-old, same-old'... kids have a way of helping that :)

When I wasn't watching kids, I spent time sneaking glimpses into a book called "Father to Daughter: Life lessons on Raising a Girl". I was in Monkey Shine's books (http://www.monkeyshinesbooks.com/) on the weekend with my parents. It's an absolutely fantastic kids book store in Marda Loop & yeah, I saw this little book by Harry H. Harrison, Jr. that is a bunch of little tidbits of wisdom on raising girls. I picked it up & yeah, it passed the tear test (i.e. read a bit, it made me cry, this is a good sign that the book touches me). I set it down thinking it was maybe silly that I should pick it up now, when I'm, well, not even dating & far, far, farrrrr (really far) from having kids. But decided it I'd add it to the library 'cause, well, eventually I'd like to have kids &, for whatever reason, hope for daughter(s). Maybe it's the perpetual growing up without sisters, maybe it's some overconfidence that I could raise strong & gentle women, or who knows... but yeah, figured I might as well grab the book now & that way I'm not trying to remember it when I'm older & actually about to have a baby.... (& yeah, if I get too much older, who knows what I'll forget, eh? :) )

I sort of hid the book behind my Bible at church. Still a bit shy to show off the book in public (or at least was). Made it through reading about the 'wonder years' about the early years & this dovetailed nicely with some of the other thoughts mentioned above. Some selected bits of wisdom from the book (it's a great little book. Really recommend it from what I've seen so far:

"Realize from the beginning that even at one week old, she's a girl. So she's going to be just as charming, and just as mystifying, as every other girl you know. Beign her dad will not change this."
"Tell her from day one that she can accomplish anything"
"Let her sleep on your chest when she's a baby. This is when the world begins to make sense."
"Memorize her face. her eyes. Her hands. She'll be memorizing everything about you."
"Be prepared to watch Walt Disney movies with her some 200 times. Each."
"Never lose the wonder of watching her & her mother together"
"Trust her mom to understand the mystery of little girls. You have yet to figure out the mystery of big ones."
"Bear in mind that from the very beginning your personality will shape her. Realize that as you shape her, she will shape you."
"Don't think that because she's a sweet little girl that she can't throw food with the best of them."
"Build a shelf for her dolls and stuffed animal collection. Ask her to tell you stories about each one."
"Buy her a jungle gym. However, if she falls off that jungle gym, disregard those thoughts about killing yourself."
"Dance with her always. She'll never be too young. Or old."
"Resist the urge to let her sleep in your bed when she's scared or sick. Independence starts in childhood. Instead, sit with her in her own room until she falls back to sleep."
"Teach her not to be afraid of boys, but to be ready to challenge them."
"When she's old enough, sign her up for karate lessons. This is more for your sake than hers."
"Never laugh at her dreams."

People don't talk that way anymore

I made a comment in a comment (if that makes sense) a few posts back commenting that I tend to watch TV & movies with God. This sounds weird & sacrilegious to a lot of Christians 'cause we tend to classify things like reading your bible & praying as things you can do 'with' God, while watching 'secular' things like entertainment are done apart from God.

I'm trying to live out of a spirituality of where I recognize that I am indwelt by Christ (i.e. Jesus lives in my skin somehow). This is a concept for me, not something I understand fully. But it involves walking in the idea that every moment is shared with Jesus. If I want to do something great & noble, Jesus is there doing it with me (often loving through my words, eyes, hands, arms). If I want to drag myself into the mire & slime of the most despicable acts, I end up dragging Jesus in with me & he endures this, the one who knows no sin, becoming sin to bestow His righteousness on me.

So it's recognizing that God inhabits every moment of my day & so I might as well acknowledge this & enjoy hanging out with Him. It's not like I invite him into each moment, I just realize (once in a while) that He is present in each moment & then just enjoy the reality of time shared; in the same way that time is shared with a friend or lover.

& so when I sit down to watch TV or a movie, I am never alone. I am always 'in presence' & so get to share what I watch with Him. & this is not a fearful thing like I was taught when I was younger; something that makes me feel guilty about what I watch/don't watch. Instead, it's a time of dialogue, where I can listen to His heart for the story being portrayed on the screen ( a story, which, if some of my theories hold true, may in some ways come from him, if he is the source of all creativity - this is a fuzzy, non-formalized thought so far, so don't quote me on this as being legit. It may still be out to lunch - like all the rest of my ideas & perspectives :) )

Anyhow, in this, I find there are often 'messages' hidden in movies/TV. Little tiny things that sneak in & I hear God's voice whispering to me in the middle of a show about something related or un-related....

... Friday night watched the movie "National Treasure" with my folks. Great movie. Haven't seen it before, but got it for Christmas from my lovely brother & sister-in-law. My dad borrowed it from me before I returned to Calgary, not realizing it was a Christmas present, & really enjoyed the movie & was excited to get the movie back to me & watch it again.

So great time enjoying a good movie with my folks.... but again, hidden in the movie were little message where I had to choke back the overflow of tears as God whispered stuff to me.

The tears came, most of all, in two places reflecting one thought:

The first came when Nicolas Cage's character Ben Gates is staring at the Declaration of Independence & he says:

"Of all the ideas that became the United States, there's a line here that's at the heart of all the others. 'But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and provide new Guards for their future security.' People don't talk that way anymore......" - Ben Gates

Later on in the movie this one phrase gets repeated when Ben Gates is talking with the romantic interest, Abigail Chase & she asks him if he knows for certain that the treasure they're pursuing is real:

"No, but I hope it's real. I mean, I've dreamt it was real since my grandfather told me about it.... I feel like I'm so close I can taste it. but just, I just want to know it's just not something in my head or in my heart." - Ben Gates

"People don't really talk that way you, know?" - Abigail Chase

"I know, but they think that way...." - Ben Gates

Both times I got choked up at the phrase "People don't talk that way anymore".... Some days I feel very anarchronistic, very out of time. Some days I wonder if everyone feels like they were born outside of the right time, the right age that they were meant for.... I'm probably really lucky that I was born into late 20th century north american Gen-x culture. I'm too much of a pansy & likely wouldn't have survived very long in any other time & place....

...but there are these moments where I feel like I speak things that are very out of time... things that do not fit the language of the world around me. Some days I try to fit in with what's 'normal', I really do.... but I'm never any good at it. A sudden gust of wonder, beauty, awe, tragedy, something will come along & i'll be blown off balance & all the dust of normality will fall off & leave only the brittle-brown of a leaf caught in a wind greater than & outside itself....

...some of my loneliness in life has come from this sense of feeling out of step with the times - of longing for passion, truth, justice, freedom, hope, love, great heady ideals that, well, the words sort of mean nothing & everything at the same time. They are concepts that would take you years to define, but their words that in their simplicity rattle us to the core & whisper to our souls of realities long buried, of the beauty we see in dreams, whispers in the edges of our consciousness of 'more than this'....

I love Nicolas Cage's retort in the second quote - people maybe don't talk this way anymore, but they think this way. Somewhere, behind what's normal, I like to think that people dream, that everyone dreams. That inside the ruffest, gruffest hill-billy, billy-bob, shootin', drinkin', fightin' kind of guy, or the bleach-blond, bubble-head, drama-queen, in all of us there beats a heart that asks the hard questions, that wonders "why am I here?", "what does this really mean?", "What am I doing with my life?" "What is love?", "What is beauty?" "What is truth?"

So yeah, maybe us odd folks who ramble on, who talk like they used to talk, maybe we can (in all our fumbling) articulate, make plain, one tiny thought that inspires someone to dream, to hope, to live in passion... I guess that maybe makes it all worth it in the end (though hard to see in the middle)....

Creative Outlets pt.2

OK, so here's where the geekdom really comes out....

... as most people do (or don't) know, I've been collecting G.I. Joes since I was a kid. Well, let me rephrase: The reality is that I bought G.I. Joe toys from about the age of 11-17ish & then stopped for a while, partly 'cause they were hard to find & they had reduced the quantity that they were releasing. I more recently (2004?) rediscovered this as a hobby through having seen the new whizzy 'night attack chopper' in stores & finally made up my mind (a year or so after it had left stores) to buy one & so went hunting on the net to find it.

This led me to discover the marvels of Ebay & after not too long I got the idea stuck in my head that I could now, as an adult engineer with no dependents, purchase all of the stuff I wanted as a kid, but never had money for.... so yeah, that started the pursuit of old & new G.I. Joes (& Transformers) that now take up pretty much every available flat display place in the house... when my roommates laugh at me about it, I threaten to kick them out to make more room for the collection & they seem to get really quiet, real quick after that... they figure I'd likely do it.

It's been an interesting time collecting them. I've enjoyed building the collection. Each new piece/figure has been great & it's always exciting to get new stuff in the mail or at the toy/hobby stores. Part of the fun has just been the pursuit of it all. It's given me something to do to occupy my time in the empty places over the last couple of years. Part of it is that I've needed something to fill the void after backing out of all ministry activities. Part of it is maybe (& this is likely just spiritualizing things) because some of my dreams have been to bring together an army of people to sow love in the earth; to put together groups of like minded, like hearted people in like-gifted or cross-gifted teams to go out into the world around & bring beauty, love, hope, joy.... and yeah, after the sense of losing those dreams, I guess the army-building instinct had to turn somewhere else to express itself.

I sort of ended up trapped in a mini-arms race for a while & so I now better understand the cold war. I kept trying to balance out the firepower of the noble, heroic, fight-for-freedom G.I. Joes, with that of the ruthless, terrorist organization of Cobra.... & yeah, you'd sort of get things nearly balanced, figure you needed only one more piece for one side to make it even & then you'd get a good deal & get two vehicles for a 'deal' & then that would bump one side into being more powerful than the other & so you had to look for another vehicle/plane etc. to help maintain the balance of power... (yes, yes, this is all sadly geekified, I know)

& yeah, part of the collecting stuff has come from my job of working with the military, er, excuse me, 'defense' industry. I've been learning a little bit about army organizational structure & so I've been putting all of my G.I. Joes & Cobras into 'units' & squads.... I've got the full blown organizational chart in an excel spreadsheet showing which teams & sub-teams everyone belongs to....

So yeah, anyhow, they are coming out with less & less of the 3 3/4" guys, in order to make way for the next generation of G.I. Joe fans who will be playing with a combined 8" and 2.5" line (or who will ignore the line all together & let the mythos fade into history), so my collecting days are starting to wind down (mind you I've been saying this for the past year). Mostly I've noticed that since choosing to hang out with the community house folks & start to get back into more relationships past just the 'inner circle', the obsessions levels have dropped a bit. Just have more stuff to fill the holes now.....

...but, I've been on a bunch of message boards listening to the greater 'Joe' community & have been seeing a number of 'customs' being made. This is where they take old figures & 'Frankenstein' them & repaint them. The 3 3/4" figures basically come apart into a head, boots, thighs (2 pieces/leg), waist, torso (2 piece) & arms (which, if you're good can be taken apart further, but I haven't figured that out yet. So people who 'Frankenstein' the figures just mix & match parts to create the form or 'sculpt' of the figure they want & then they just repaint it. Some people are creating entirely new characters. Some are creating their take on classic characters or characters from the comic books & cartoons that have never had a figure created for that character.

There are also a number of custom stores open now on the web selling custom heads, body parts & weapons. For a taste of this, check out: http://www.marauderinc.com/ - this is a guy who makes tons of little tiny guns & accessories for G.I. Joes. They're cheap(ish) & highly detailed & high quality... & (the engineer is coming out again), it's amazing that he can make some of the parts as small as he does....

So yeah, one of my new creative outlets, as geeky as it may be, has been trying my hands at the customizing. I'm not that good at it, but it's been kind of fun. It's been really relaxing & I have to really concentrate with painting the little parts, so it eats up time that I could spend worrying about other stuff, which I need every once in a while... I was able to complete quite a few customs done over Christmas (when I wasn't playing with niece & nephew) & here's a look at some of the projects (feel free to mock me at any time :) ):

So, some of these 'customs are really simple. I've been buying helmets from one of the custom stores on the web & you just paint up the helmet & add it to the existing figure. To the left is Dragonsky, the Oktober Guard flame throwing specialist. For whatever reason, when they finally release a figure of him, they didn't include a helmet. Dude had a helmet in the comics, so some guy on the 'net makes a helmet, the rest of us geeks buy the helmet & paint it & voila (the red star on the top was a pain & I had to paint the helmet twice 'cause I used a dull coat on the first one that kind of ate the paint. This is with a clear coat.

I'm using an acryllic paint with on the figures & it'll kind of come off, so they get you to spray it with a coating when it's done. One hobby shop employee told me to use an enamel dull coat, so the figures aren't so shiny. Another hobby shop person told me to use only the clear coat 'cause the dull would eat the paint, so yeah, I'm thinking the 2nd dude was maybe right....

This guy 'Ghost' is a figure of my own creation (i.e. does not exist in the comics or cartoon). Again this involves just painting the helmet. This was originally a figure named 'Firefly' & he didn't look like the classic image of Firefly & so I eventually got another figure to be 'the' Firefly' in my collection. But still liked the overall look of this figure & then found a helmet that would fit him. & the helmet really completes the figure for me.... Painted one of the helmets up at Marty & Kari's place & talked colour choices over with Marty. Again, the dull-coat kind of ate the first one & so I painted up a 2nd (the shinier one).

Other figures I've done are just full repaints. You don't change any parts in or out. You use the exact same figure, but totally redo the colours &, to steal a favorite phrase from my neice, 'Ta da"...new figure. On the left is the original 'Footloose' figure, on the right is my repainted 'Claymore' figure.

The only real different physically between the figures is the gear. Claymore has a vest that I've bought off of a custom store. Otherwise the core figure is the same.

There is an existing Claymore figure, but it's rare & costs an arm & a leg on ebay, so figured I'd make my own so I have the 'character' as part of my collection without needing to fork out the money for a, honestly, kind of dorky looking figure (the original figure is really yellow)

Other cost saving figures is this one. On the left is the Hasbro released A.V.A.C. figure which also costs a lot on ebay (this picture taken from http://www.yojoe.com, along with all other pictures not taken from me - it's the crazy web based G.I. Joe encyclopedia with tons of info on all things Joe). Found a sculpted AVAC head on one of the custom websites & picked it up. This is a frankenstein figure. Waist down is from one figure, the torso from another, the arms from another figure & the head bought off this custom website.

F.I. Joe was released as toys in other countries & a few of them have created their own unique figures that have become popular with the fandom. These two are my take on a couple of Brazillian figures, Cobra de Aco (Steel Cobra) & Cobra Mortal.

Here's are the art work from the toys to show what I was trying to emulate with the figures. Cobra De Aco (on the left is a Frankenstein with a new head. The Mortal figure is pretty much an existing figure with a new head & new paintjob.



Another interpretation of a Brazillian figure is this one of 'Glenda'. Again, pretty much a full repaint of one figure with a new custom head from one of the custom websites.

Fought for a long, long time with the eyes. Really like the detail on the left eye (her right). Really botched it on the right eye (her left), but got tired of dealing with it....
This is Lt.Stone. A character from the 8" line that I thought was cool & wanted to make a 3 3/4" figure. The 8" figure is pictured on the left, mine on the right.

The "Sigma 6" logo on his chest got all painted by hand. Pain in the butt, but turned out not too bad all things considered.

Maybe not as happy with the face. Took another figure's head & 'shaved' it's moustache by sanding it off. Didn't take the time with it like I should've.... and the robotic arm is a little loose, but haven't figured out how to fix that yet....


And here's a random collection of other figures I've completed. Again, pretty much all are non-preexisting-character creations (cept for a the guy with the ey patch & the guy with the green helmet - he's an existing figure with just a helmet repaint). Most of these, I just liked how the parts came together to make a decent looking figure/person.

The copperish guy is going to be called 'Gladiator'. He got put together 'cause I found this nice copper paint & thought it would look cool with the helmet & got the sword & shield to go with it. Pretty much the same figure as the 'Duke' in green (see a few pictures below), just different helmet & different arms.

The cobra symbol on the shield is all painted by me eyeballing it & using tiny brushstrokes & coat after coat of correction. Pretty happy with how it turned out after all the work put into it.

And have included a picture of Gladiator & Ghost. You can see the full figure & the two helmets for Ghost in this one.


The figure with the funky thing on his head is taking an existing torso & arms, leaving it untouched & adding new legs/waist & a custom head bought of the web.

The trenchcoat on the cowboy figure it actually made by a guy in the states who specializes in making & selling tiny G.I. Joe clothes.

So yeah, crazy geek world out there. Quite a number of middle aged men trying to relive their childhood with too much time & disposable income on their hands....

...oh well, it's a creative outlet & quirky hobby. Might as well get it out of my system while I've got some time...

(Again, feel free to laugh :) )

41 Lawnmowers: Why I need community Pt.2

Well, got an e-mail from Andrea yesterday reminding me that I'm maybe not quite as horrible a person as I make myself out to be :). I partially knew that, but yeah, the reminders are always good.... & needed.

Oh, & on the way into work I realized that my (original) copy of Jeff Buckley's 'Grace' is likely in the stack of CD's loaned to Marie.... sigh....

Part of my thoughts with 'Grace' & borrowing stuff stem from these two songs that Billy Crockett contrasts on his live "In These Days" album. I first listened to this CD a long, long time ago on the road past Whidbey Island in Washington state. The songs really struck me then in their beautiful bluntness & the lessons/messages from them have stuck every since:

"41 lawnmowers" by Billy Crockett

"Find a good old neighborhood. / A square block of the USA. / Stake your claim. / Claim your space. / Sink you r roots & live your days.

Build a fence / close it in / raise a lawn & grow some kids. / Make a name. Name your friends. /And that's the American way to live.

and 41 houses, only 1 street /41 yards, 82 trees. / 41 mowers all sitting in sheds / 41 families in over their heads / & everybody's got their own everything.

from the Bronx to Hollywood. / Montreal to Mexico. /The fever grows. /Go for gold. / Gain the world & lose your soul

Push & shove / don't look back / Absolute success attack. / Insulate / Cul-de-sac / Prove the universe of fact.

41 houses, only 1 street /41 yards, 82 trees. / 41 mowers all sitting in sheds / 41 families in over their heads / 41 neighbors with nothing to say / building their lives the American way /& everybody's got their own everything.

41 houses, only 1 street /41 yards, 82 trees. / 41 mowers all sitting in sheds / 41 families in over their heads / 41 tables for 41 meals, 41 hundred automobiles/ 41 neighbors with nothing to say / building their lives the American way /& everybody's got their own everything. "

This is the song that was running through my head while thinking about the whole 'Grace' thing. This pictures the lifestyle I live of where I have to have all of my own everything. Mostly it's the convenience of not having to ask to borrow or make arrangements to share. Most of it's just easy-ness.... or maybe being lazy, or selfish, or just wanting to isolate & insulate myself from having to rub shoulders with people around me & have to take the time to spend with people.

One of the love languages I operate most in is 'time'... If someone wants to show they love me, the simplest way to do it is to make time for me. Though I am a bit of a time hog & will eat up people's time if they let me. But time is one of the commodities that I very much see as limited. Each of us gets the same 24 hour portion each day & all of us get a lifetime of these (some lifetimes are shorter than others, but still...). So we get this gift of the number of our days & then get to choose how to 'spend' this gift. You can't hang on to them, or 'bank' your time for a rainy day later, you are always being forced to 'spend' your moments in the perpetual now of life. And so it's not a matter of choosing whether or not you'll spend your time, it's just how you spend it....

...and so knowing I have limited time, I tend to guard it, sometimes a bit too carefully. I alot time for myself now - which I never used to do, but I'm learning I have to do this to maintain sanity. And I don't feel guilty (much) for this anymore. And then I alot my time according to the 'circles' of closeness. Those closest to me get access to my time pretty much whenever they want & if they don't try to make use of that, I'll track them down & spend organize time to spend with them. & then it just extends from there. I make choices about who gets a part of my 'time' & I recognize that to really nurture a good relationship (or anything for that matter), it takes time....

...and so in places I'm miserly with time. I try to keep open to relationships, but am kind of selfish with my time & have tried to stop just giving my time out to everyone & everything that wants it....

... so I live some of the 41 lawnmower lifestyle because of being afraid that I don't have enough hours in my day. Part of it is self-preservation in some sense. It's this pursuit of trying to make sure your needs (& wants) are filled, which is maybe silly some days, especially with a God who promises to look after you (not that I'm that good at trusting that either).....

...but yeah, I keep thinking that it's the 41 lawnmower lifestyle which is killing our planet & north america far more than anything else. It's our consumerism & waste (i.e. buy lots of crap & throw the older model crap in landfills) that drives our industries to produce so much... & yeah, I guess this is simplistic. If there was no industry, there'd be no jobs. No jobs, no money to buy stuff including food, people would starve (or at least us city people who've forgotten how to look after ourselves without a grocery store near by).

...but yeah, the '41 lawnmower' lifestyle was what I was thinking about when I wrote the 'grace' post - this is the 'disease' that I'm infected with, along with just pride & things like that....

.... this second song is Billy's response/contrast to the 41 lawnmower lifestyle. It's a lifestyle that the people at the community house are starting to aspire to & one that I am hoping to grow into as well.... It's something where you can look at it & think, "my that's naive, it's too simple".... but sometimes I wonder if it's the simple things of actually loving people (which is in reality perhaps the hardest thing to do) that can really change this planet....

"All Together" - by Billy Crockett

(CHORUS) All together Sing the song, all together, everyone belongs together a family, we are all all all all together.

“Life is what you make it”, that’s what they say, but Jesus says you find it by giving your heart away. So we’re here together and love is the key that opens every lonely heart and shows us how to be

(CHORUS) All together Sing the song, all together, everyone belongs together a family, we are all all all all together.

Friends are smiles God sends to brighten our way A friend is someone special like love on a summer day So we are here together in God’s family to smile together, cry together, love and learn to be

(CHORUS) All together Sing the song, all together, everyone belongs together a family, we are all all all all together.

spoken: In Christ there is neither Jew, Greek, male, female, rich or poor, we are all one. There is neither graduate student or freshmen, there is neither honor student or drop out, we are one.. in Christ. There is, I want to say no color, but I think I'll say there is all colors & it's all good.... He said I am the vine & you are the branches. Stay connected. Stay attached to me & I will keep you together.... love each other.. isn't it better love than that someone would lay down his live for a friend & then He went out & did it...

Becoming All Flame

Been looking through some old data archives looking for some song lyrics to save me typing out some things. On the way, I found a couple of quotations I'd copied down from Jeff Imbach's "The River Within" - a book which I read while wandering through Ireland & learning how to breathe again. I've since lost or loaned out the book & so should probably pick up another copy. Too bad, too, I think I had my copy signed by the author. But anyhow, that's a rabbit trail....

Even though I haven't seen the book in years, the imagery of this story has been haunting me of the last number of months:

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba,
as far as I can, I say my [daily] office, I fast a little, I pray
and meditate. I live in peace as far as I can. I purify my
thoughts. What else can I do?”

Then the old man stood up, stretched his arms towards
heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he
said to him, “If you want, you can be all flame.”
- from the writings of the Desert Masters
(quoted in Jeff Imbach’s “The River Within”)

This image of suddenly becoming 'all flame' has been burning in my mind. Part of it is from the occasional times where I maybe really see the friends around me. There have been a few times in my life where I have looked at someone & seen them - in my mind's eye, not physically, but the revelation was no less tangible - become 'all flame' or maybe rather 'all light'... I sort of remember some cheesy Star Trek the next Generation episode where one person 'evolves' into this being of pure energy & (as much as I hate to make the comparison), it's reminded me of that.

For me it's this thing where you suddenly see past the veil of flesh & look square into the million-sun brightness of the truth of who someone really is; a being infinitely loved by God, a being who is made in the image of God & indwelt by the overwhelming glory of God's presence... It's a breathtaking sight, it steals all words & ability to speak, but it's this moment where you get the sense that you're seeing something that is always present, but you just never take the time to really 'see' it...

... Further than that, though, I believe a reality of where we as humans, as those touched by God, are destined for great things. I think we limit ourselves substantially, don't really see the fire of Presence within us & so we never really bother trying to let it out. We, like Abba Lot, go through the motions of religious practice, trying constantly to shape & mold ourselves into some image of what we think God will want.... and in it, we miss what Abba Joseph knows, that the fire of God's presence blazes in us uncontrollably. We don't need to contort ourselves to remake ourselves in His image, we have to stop & realize that we are made in His image, are His image in many ways. We don't have to try to do stuff to fire ourselves up, we have to realize that the fire is within & let it burn out of control (which is sort of scary for us - as burning bushes, messengers of God, we have a hard time believing that the fire can burn & yet the bush is not consumed)....

... but this is ultimately where I want my faith to grow to (& by that I mean, I want to 'labour' to enter into that rest of living out of the truth of my being, the truth of being in Christ, as opossed to living out of the many false images, false identities I wear to impress/placate people around me); I want to be 'all flame', so entwined with Christ that we become 'one' - the marriage of diety & humanity, the word becoming flesh. All of this is stuff that He does as oppossed to me working up a 'god complex' (which I try to do some days)... but yeah, I'm not really sure what it all means some days, but the imagery paints a tantalizing picture for me.....

& yeah, every so often I stick my hand up in the air to see if anything starts to burn....

Also found this poem from the book, too. It's a great little poem. Definitely from a male Canadian perspective, but it's a very good perspective & poem.... I love seeing the playfulness of God in this, the intimacy of our relationship with Him & also the wild parts of being with a good who is "not safe, but is good"....

What if God and I
danced
and we tumbled doing flips
and got up and wrestled
until one of us said
“Uncle!”

and we leaned back to back
staring into the evening
pressing against each other and
savouring the warmth between us?

And what if God took the initiative
and sent me flying
down the sloping grass
or tied my shoelaces together
while I snoozed

And we played hockey
and I creamed God into the boards
to get even for all the times
I had the puck stolen and

was left
spinning while He deked
past me
and scored into the open net?

- by Jeff Imach

Creative Outlets pt.1

As a disclaimer: been meaning to post this stuff for a while, but haven't taken the time for it. Figured I had nothing to say tonight & so figured it'd be a good night to fit this in, but I did have stuff to say. Check the post below this one for the sordid details.... confession is good for the soul from what I hear....

Anyhow, have had over the course of the past year, chances for artistic expression, creative outlet other than writing. I went through a long drought from writing (which as you can see is apparently over for a while)... Being a creative, your soul dies if there is no outlet, no expression of creativity & so I found - by choice, accident, self-preservation instinct - a collection of creative outlets over the year.

One of which was pottery painting. Here's the products of that outlet:

First is a vase that I put together trying multiple coats on top to give the solid colours & lighter colours on the bottom with a sponge to give the mixture/texture. A good friend gave me a book on pottery painting (that I haven't used enough) that suggested the idea of putting on thicker paint & then scraping some way to reveal what's underneath. The green leaves are my first attempt at this.

Second attempt is another mug. Didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. Was hoping for a sunset effect on the side, but didn't work. Again, added the leaves with the scraping, but still not quite right....


Thirdly was another mug that I painted while hanging out with my friend Mark & my friend Samantha's Danish cousins....

Tried using masking tap to tape off areas that I didn't want painted over (hence the white bits & tried doing a multi shape pattern by the handle (this idea stolen from one of Samantha's projects). & used different layers of pain to give the multi coloured ripple effects. One layer of paint will give you a light colour, two layers will make it slightly darker. So I painted the one colour on solidly across the whole area & then painted the same colour again over only some of the space (what comes out as the darker areas).

This is the hard part about pottery painting is that you never really know what you're going to get until after they've fired it....Lastly there's the project that I put together for my brother Preston for a christmas gift. I started painting it with my friend Rachel (a true artist :) who is definitely missed ) & it took me a long time to finish.

It was suppossed to have a Kyrgyz theme to it, hence the patterns on the sides were made to look like the Kyrgyz runs that Preston makes.

These took a long, long time to do & were kind of painful in just how much work went into them, so the other two sides got done in a bit of a rush, trying to use the scraping technique to throw in some more subtle designs.....

Finally though, that left the top to do & I wanted to make it look like the sun & yurt in the middle of the flag of Kyrgyzstan, which looks like:
But that didn't quite turn out. Instead I got this:


Pretty close & Preston was happy, but again, not what I had hoped it would look like after going through the fire (though I guess we never know what things look like until after the fire)...

Grace: why I need community (pt.1 of many)

I'm a very bad man....

OK, well, this is maybe an overreaction to the circumstances, but it sort of applies. Again, I'm confronted in the quietness of this evening with the realities that there are a number of things wrong with me....

... So, ladies & gentlemen of the jury, here's the testimony of this particular infraction; one more piece of evidence that shows that I'm no good at community & need some rehabilitation....

Last Saturday I was out for coffee with my good friend, Andrea, & we talked about (among other things), grace - both as a spiritual reality in each of our lives & as the title of a Jeff Buckley album. If you haven't heard the album, you should at least give it a try. It was recommended to me originally by Josip Vulic, a co-worker at Novatel who was/is also a fantastic musician & a lover of good guitar work.... it's a rich, rich album. Most of my exposure to the album has been the incredible blend & textures of the music & Jeff's voice.... I've sort of missed out on really chewing through the lyrics, though they sneak into my brain a bit here & there.... but it's just such a audibly rich album & one I figure most people should own (or at least sample).

Anyhow, I forget whether it was solely our conversation or other factors, but it made me hungry for listening to the album again (even with the ringing ears from last week). So I started searching through the 4-5 different stashes of CD's I have hidden around the house, went through the piles of albums that have been a part (big or small) of the music in my life... & yeah, I found nothing. (maybe it's 'cause I was looking for a black spine instead of a white CD spine)... but yeah, still can't find it & can't remember at all if I loaned it out or not.

So, Monday night I'm over at the community house & whining that I can't find my CD (mostly 'cause I'm internally flagellating myself for a messy, disorganized house & bad memory - wouldn't want to allow 'weakness' or plain humanity to creep into my life, now would I)... and in the middle of my whine, Andrea offers to loan me her copy. She's joined the digital revolution & has moved the majority of her CD's to mp3 & so she was quite happy to loan me the CD.

... and, so I hemmed & hawed, didn't actually say 'yes' to it & the evening moved on & we both forgot about it.....

...Wednesday night rolls around & I'm driving home from helping serve supper with the 'Jesus Loves You Society' ministry & I'm still craving the album, so I swing into HMV at Market Mall & pick up a copy. I reject the urge to buy the big double CD/DVDs for $40 each & feel sort of good about myself that I'm not splurging unnecessarily. So instead, I pick up the single CD for $16.99. On the grand scheme of things, I say to myself, this isn't that bad of a price for a CD & I figure I'll pee away $20 on less useful things. I figure this CD will do until I find my copy & then I could keep it as the loaner CD & so I walk out feeling sort of justified with myself, now ready to both enjoy the music & share it around.....

.... today I listen to it at work, all the same rich textures I remember, my ears catch more of the lyrics & it's all rich & intoxicating & wonderful.....

...and tonight, after hanging out with my parents I'm re-arranging things in the basement a bit (moving around some of my transformers, more of my collection of 'stuff') & I'm thinking about looking for the CD one more time.....

...and in the stillness of the evening, the reality of what I'm doing starts to dawn on me....

In my life, I love to be a giver. It's just part of my heart & something I live for. When I see a need, I try to fill the need. I love to listen to the hearts of those around me, listen for King David crying for water from Bethlehem & then go rushing through the philistines to grab him a drink... & yeah, maybe there's nothing wrong with this.....

...or maybe there is... maybe sometimes I get in the way of God (sometimes I'm definitely His hands, but now I'm starting to question that again).... maybe there are places of where God wants to grow things in a person through need or lack & I'm blocking His work by trying to 'help'... maybe God wants to show His miraculous intervention in people's lives & my non-miraculous band-aid solutions get in the way of real provision, of real faith....

...and other times, my desire to help gets twisted into one more of the fig leaves I try to put on to cover my nakedness... sometimes it's done out of pride, sometimes it's this thing of where the good feelings that come from giving to people become sort of addictive & to feel good about me, I'll try to give to fill up the empty places....

.... but I don't receive well. I'm likely constantly frustrating my roommate David 'cause he keeps trying to find stuff to 'bless' me with & I always greet them with lack luster appreciation. In my mind, I have a lot of 'stuff', too much likely. The 'stuff' I want, I buy. I'm an engineer making too much money & have no dependants & no debt & so I tend to squander my money 'cause I don't appreciate it (& by squander I mean I blow it on my collections (G.I Joes, transformers, CDs or DVDs - or books sometimes, but they're different) or I give it away to people). Money doesn't have a really good value in my life. Part of this is from recognizing that money is just paper, it's dust, it will not buy the things we really need which is love, community & friendship... so part of me only sees money as a tool to get people where they're going or to help me indulge in the random crap that I find some degree of pleasure in. The other reason is that I don't really feel i earn my money. When I worked for my dad doing construction, at the end of the day, you feel like you've earned every cent. As an engineer, I take the money for granted 'cause it's not like I've 'worked' that hard for it. I guess maybe that's a wrong perspective. I get paid to think, make decisions, deal with the stress of making choices that affect the outcome of billion dollar contracts.... but I think there is a level of abstraction with my work where I really never see a finished product & so I feel like my days at the office are spent in futility, sand through the hourglass without a real measurable finished product to show for your effort....

All that to say, that I'm a lousy person to give gifts to 'cause I keep indulging myself instead of leaving room for people to give me things (ask my friend the angel).

& I've got these really weird ideas on property rights. I'm not sure where this comes from, but I have this really strong sense of what is 'my stuff' vs. someone else's stuff. 'My stuff' are things that I can do what I want with. If I take good care of it or destroy it, it's my business, I paid the money for it, it's mine & so if I'm not careful with it, I reap those consequences. Other people's 'stuff' on the other hand is treated with a level of reverence. it's not something I've earned, it's borrowed & doesn't belong to me, so I treat it, most times, with the respect that I'd treat the person who has loaned me it. Though this doesn't always fit - I've had people loan me books & I've spilled stuff on them & will then buy them a brand new copy of the book & keep their original copy. I have other books loaned to me a long, long time ago (e.g. the poems of Hafiz) that I keep neglecting to return to people.... & these things eat away at me.

I hate borrowing stuff. It's something really odd in me. I'm afraid or something of taking responsibility for other people's stuff. Maybe it's just 'cause I know I'm not that responsible... Something in this is the same reason why I always ring the bell when I visit people's places. It's their property & I've got no rights there unless welcomed in. & this is so hard wired that it's hard to enter in even when you're given a standing invitation to just walk in the door.

Maybe it's that I don't like to be a receiver. I think there's something from my family that has fostered this self-reliance. As a family, we stuck to our own. We looked after ourselves & were taught to look out for family. We ended up cut off from our relatives in some ways because of conflicts within the extended family. Maybe it's the independent baptist thing where we sort of believed we were the only Christians on planet earth. But somewhere in there, I had it ingrained in me to make my own way... to be generous, to give liberally, but to make sure you look after yourself.... For whatever reason we were not a family that seemed to take handouts... or never really seemed to need them.....

...& so maybe it's habit, maybe it's pride, but yeah... I don't receive well....

...and so here I sit, loving the ability to give to others & almost expecting that others will be willing to receive whatever I extend to them... & I'm miserly in receiving, my heart closed up to even the smallest expressions of love & friendship. Being loaned a CD is perhaps not the highest sacrifice, most costly gift that someone could give, but if I'm balking at that, then what in the world am I going to do when I really need help?

It's a wonder in some ways that I'm a Christian with this heart... the whole thing about Christianity, the thing that sets it apart from every religion on the planet, is this thing called grace.... At the root, the heart of Christianity is a gift, the gift of life through Jesus's death... it's a gift that is freely & unconditionally given with an open hand.... but it's a gift that has to be received. The receiver must confess need, must confess that they can't get this gift themselves, & must rely on, trust, the hand of the giver that they are indeed benevolent & good & full of love & not just giving something with expectations, conditions or strings attached....

... and so my subtle refusal to borrow the CD from Andrea, the waste of buying another CD instead of borrowing just highlights the reality that I'm crooked deep down... there is something not right in me that would rather spend money on stuff I likely don't need instead of just receiving the smallest act of kindess of a dear friend....

...this is why I don't do very well with community (among many, many other reasons). I'm stubbornly self-reliant & don't receive grace well... I'm getting slightly better, but yeah, long, long ways to go on that...

& if you fully look at it, this does make me a 'bad man' or at least a broken one... I talk about love, look to give love & then turn my back on even the small expressions of love... Part of this stems from pride, from wanting to be god of my own little world... part of it stems from fear & pain & years of self-hatred that tells me I don't deserve the love or that other's 'stuff' is so much more sacred & i'll sully it with my unwashed hands... but at the end of the day, no matter what the explanation is, it means I'm broken. I need love & yet turn away from love... I need the true gifts that money can't buy - friendship, kindness, respect, love.... and yet will turn from receiving those to buy crap to numb the empty places that are there 'cause I'm not receiving the love that is offered me.....

... all in all that's pretty @#&#ed up.... (though I get the sense that maybe I'm not the only person on the planet with these issues).... all in all what it means is that I need grace - primarily the gift from God, but also the gift from people (even if it's as metaphorically obvious as receiving albums called 'grace' from good friends)

So to Andrea, the angel, David, & all the other plethora of people who try to show me love & I wiggle my way out of receiving, I'm sorry. I apologize & ask for grace.... I'm not that good at the friendship thing & yeah, I'm going to take a lot of work... & a lot of patience & love...

Labour to enter into rest

I don't know what time I finished posting last night, but it was late-ish... then ended up laying awake for a long, long time tossing & turning. When i'd gotten home I'd felt hungry, thought I'd grab some ice cream, but only managed one or two bites before putting the rest back in the container (which you can do if you're the only one eating out of your box of ice cream). Between the ice cream, the thoughts/frustrations from the movie & the unshed tears for a world where communication fails so badly, and ultimately me stewing about my own areas/issues of communication breakdown, my tummy was left a knotted, twisted mess. I felt ill.

So I tossed an turned til at least 3, likely 3:30, thoughts churning, stomach churning, my body rolling over & over hoping that some new position would help my body feel ready to drift off into sleep... Finally I think I started to think about work to try to take my mind off stuff (or at least I think that's how it worked - I woke up hours later with some bad taste in my mouth & these warped dreams about trying to fit in temperature tests that seemed to keep failing)....

Some of the night was praying for God to make sense out of things, to reveal my heart to me. Some of it was prayers for a mercy killing - for some bolt of sleep to pierce my brains from the heavens & help me drift off into dreams....

.... but somewhere before the trying to trick my mind onto other subjects came the thoughts that I have to stop trying to figure out stuff on my own. That I need to leave behind the days of self-reliance & trusting in my own stength/wisdom to get me through life.

... this, if I look at it right, is pretty much the thought that I had in the past that spurred me on to joining up with the urban monastery/community house crowd.....

.... it was some time in december. I was sitting in church & meditating on Hebrews 4. This is a passage that has bothered me for years 'cause I don't get how the whole stuff about the promised land, etc. flows into the thoughts of the word being sharp & powerful & this idea that we have this high priest who knows our weaknesses... Every time I think I have the flow of that passage, something doesn't seem to fit & the connect the dots picture seems to re-arrange itself....

But I was thinking about the idea of 'entering into rest'. The passage speaks of a place of sabbath rest (the place where God rested from his works on the 7th day of creation). The imagery I get from the passage is that God promises to us a place where we leave striving, a place where life is no more about what we try to do, or about having to work hard to accomplish something, or fighting this seemingly futile battle that we always do... There seems to be a promise of rest, a place where you stop working & allow God to work through you...

The metaphor for this place of rest that is used here is the 'promised land' - the land of Canaan as discussed in the book of Joshua. This was the land promised to Israel as their inheritance. it was a land inhabited by many enemies & the place where they crossed over Jordan to enter the land meant an entrance into a long, long stretch of battle after battle.

So where does the rest come in? Well, the point is that the battles they fought were to be fought under God's power. The first battle the Israelite's faced in the promised land was Jericho, the place where God toppled the walls.

And so the metaphor seems to speak that this "rest for the people of God" is not a place without battles, or fighting, but rather it's a place where God does most of the fighting for you. There is still a place of 'work' in some sense, but by comparison, it's God who does it all & you're left to mop up some of the mess He leaves behind (whirlwinds, hurricanes, raging fires, do have a way of leaving a bit of a mess in their aftermath)....

...and the passage warns of the ways that the first time Israel came to the promised land they weren't able to enter in because of unbelief. As I've thought more & more on that recently, I've had the thought that the whole source of their 'unbelief' came down to a self-reliance instead of a God reliance. The passage in Hebrews encourages us to 'labour to enter into rest'. The people of Israel didn't enter the place of rest the first time 'cause they were trusting in their own 'labours' - they looked at the land & saw giants & looked at their own hands, their own strength & said, "we can't do it" & backed away from the land. Then after God told them they would wander for 40 years, they again rested in their own labours & tried to enter the land & most who did so were killed.....

....but instead, the true 'labouring to enter rest' is the place of where we 'work' at moving from stubborn self-reliance to a full reliance on God. It is a labour of 'laying down our lives', of losing our souls for His sake so that we might find it. Ultimately it's a place where we stop trying to earn God's favour, acceptance, provision & blessing through our works & instead, enter into the rest of living in trust that God has given us all of these things freely out of His abundant love for us as children & as bride & as friend...

And so at the time I forget what I was thinking. Pretty sure I was sort of thinking that this was the problem of the church in general or humanity in general that everyone was too busy working to earn God's favour instead of living in the rest of the realization that, in Christ, God has poured out His favour on us as a permenant gift....

...but somewhere in there, I realized that this was my malady, my disease, as well. I realized that in every problem I face, I look at my own resources & I will 'trust' God so long as I have a back up plan. As I've said before, when I was unemployed, there were these places where I talked like I was going to trust God to provide, but I knew that mastercard had my back in case God didn't come through.... this, of course, I realized, showed my true faith, that I trusted only what I could control & didn't trust God's providence. And this example spills out through everything in my life. When friends have needs, I look to my resources first & try to give with open hand.... this is great in some ways, but in others it cheapens the power & miracle of how God could provide if I wasn't in the way trying to fix things for people..... Though there are always the needs greater than my resources (my friend Jason's epilepsy is one of these, other friends it's their financial concerns, etc.)... these are the places where I look at my resources & realize that what I have is not enough to help.... & these moments scare me & I tend to back away & beat myself up about my 'failings', my inability to really help people.... I pray about these needs, but unless I can somehow be the answer to my own prayers, I still sort of doubt that God will come through.

Part of this stems just from past hurts & disillusionment & disappointment in prayer - the places where God didn't jump to do what I commanded him like some genie bending to my wishes....

.... and so the realization that struck me that day, that sort of struck me in the churning is just how much I am still living in this state of atheistic self-reliance. I don't believe in God's provision, to true answer to prayer. I've lost hope of the miraculous & instead rely solely on the church of Kirk to provide for those around me (& myself).... & hence it's no wonder why I feel drained some days.... I make a pretty lousy god....

And so the realization led me to the place of submitting myself into community, of realizing that I need to live in a continual confession of need & inadequacy. I need to learn to lean, learn to receive, learn to be loved.... Part of the submitting to community is in the realization that the collective of a community brings much more strength & resources than that of just the individuals. A collective of people can do way more than one person alone & so in that sense, there is a 'rest' to be entered in entering into community where you are provided for by the greater whole & your resources combine with theirs for something greater.... but more than that, submitting to community is, for me anyhow, a subtle act of submitting to God.... the bible seems to speak that the church is His body, that we as a collective are somehow one with Him in a sense greater than when we are just on our own.... and so following this metaphor, coming to the community & admitting that I need help, that I'm an addict in need of counseling, a proud man in need of humbling, a weak man in need of strength, a normal man in need of love & kindness.... this is also a confession to God of laying down my striving & asking for His to fight my battles for me.... & provide for all the things I can't & help me realize that I have no resources but what He puts in my hands.....

...and yeah, I'm not very good at this.... but I'm hopefully starting to learn. & hopefully starting to learn that I can't fight through my battles on my own anymore, I need to open myself to the community & walk through the minefields with them.... (those poor people have no idea what they've gotten themselves into letting me hang out with them :) )

& so yeah, I pray that God would awaken the miraculous, that there would be a reality of seeing the place of rest. I pray for walls to crumble, enemies (the things that keep our souls bound to the lesser-thans) to be laid low, resources to be provided, to be given lands (& bank accounts) flowing with milk & honey. I pray for open wells, open hearts & for the rain of love to fall from above, to fill up every hollow place.... Love is the greatest miracle & I pray that we'd all be wealthy in it......

So yeah, with that in mind, off to bed to get some much needed sleep.

Waltzing through Babylon

As an aside, this whole blogging every day thing is great, but it is cutting into my sleep. This is maybe not quite so bad. Before I was blogging, I was up late trying to fill the emptiness. Now I'm up late spilling out the overflow of heart & thoughts... So if I'm missing sleep, at least it's for more positive reasons.....


Again today, common themes seemed to appear in multiple places in the day. It started with e-mails to two friends (the only spare moments of sanity I had in an otherwise busy day at work). One was talking about the stripping away of all that we think we are, so that, in the end, we may discover who we really are. The other was noting a random observation I had about the wonders of non-verbal communication in partner dancing (which, in the end, I didn't communicate very well).

In my brief & limited exposure to partner dancing, I found it a marvel that somehow you could lead a person by only subtle pressures of your hand on their back. Mostly it made me admire women for their ability to follow the subtle leads. I figure I'd likely never catch most of those leads & would need a sledgehammer to move me.

What was more amazing to me was the way that, over time, my friend/dance partner & myself were able to sort of learn each other's 'language'... in practicing together, there were places where we could learn to communicate better between the two of us. We could work together to listen & explain to each other the subtle points of what each movement meant, or how an intention could be better communicated....

For me, this was a beautiful, marvelous, mysterious thing. As a writer, I live in the world of words. They are my tools for carrying out the work that I do best. They are the media through which the Word becomes flesh, where the thoughts, feelings, impressions that come from me or from the creative wellspring beyond all of us flow out & become visible to others.

Words are powerful. They can shape nations or tear them down. They can start revolutions, start romances, start revelations... they can move us, inspire us, challenge us, wound us.... but for me, as much as I rely on words, especially the written word, I find that words are really weak to truly explain what it is that we really want to say (hence why i spill out a lot of words - it's a vain thought that if I spill out enough of the words, maybe something will make sense to someone who reads it)....

... spent this evening with another friend, who likewise spoke at length about the stripping process in their life. Then we watched the movie Babel, a movie all about communication, or rather the lack thereof. It's a very picturesque movie - beautiful scenery - but the lives of the people all seem really bleak. It's a whole 2 hours of miscommunication after mis-communication. Where you find that even the people speaking the same language can't really understand each other.....

.... thoughts of this intimidate me to no end - they scare me.... Babel was the first kingdom of antichrist, the first place where humanity banded together to overthrow God's rule in their lives... It was the kingdom of Nimrod, the hunter of men's souls (Genesis 10:8-10), and all through the Bible, all through history, Babel seeks to extend it's grip on the planet.... but, as the story goes, Babel was the place of confusion, the place where God gave men other tongues, other languages &, in theory, we haven't understood each other since....

....though the reality is that the problem started earlier, back in Genesis 3. Before humanity chose isolation over relationship, man & woman lived in the garden 'naked & without shame'.... they lived a life bare - body, soul & spirit - before each other & before God. There was no secrets, no facades, nothing to cover up the pure truth of who they really were. After they ate from the tree, relationship 'died'...fear & shame entered history & we've been hiding ourselves from each other ever since.... and mis-communicating since then....

In the movie I kept thinking, "Stop, just say what you're really thinking" or "Stop, listen to what the other person is saying/not saying." As a passive observer it's so easy to analyze someone else's miscommunication patterns.... but as I look at my own I think about how badly my miscommunication operates & this makes me wonder if any of my relationships have hope to be whole/healthy (friendships, family, dating/marriage, children, everything)...

Going back to the thoughts on fighting - when I get into an argument/fight, my INFP personality, which is superb for helping others, betrays me & I fall apart. The introverted side of me feels trapped. It feels like my brain is working in slow motion & I can't think of the right things to say... & I just want to hide, process the issue & come back when I've got something intelligent to say. The reality is though that my brain's not going in slow motion, it's grinding away so fast that it clogs everything. My iNtuitive/Feeling side is proposing things to say & throwing them out 'cause I instinctively know how each statement is going to affect the other person & most of what I think of saying doesn't seem to help make the conflict situation any better. The perceiving side of me starts to see all the angles & the other person's point of view & all the ways they are going to shoot down anything I have to say & this further adds to the paralysis....

Normal conversation sometimes isn't much better...

We tend to attach so much of our identity to our words. Each of us gets ideas & because they're 'our' ideas, we attach our worth, our identity to them. Then we package these ideas in our words, send them out into the world around us, like letting loose a dove & then we watch as other people shoot them down... then in these moments we feel not only misunderstood, but attacked. We feel that our hearts are not heard because someone didn't embrace our idea, come across immediately to see things the way that we see them.....

...this further exacerbates our lack of communication 'cause we don't really try to get around the miscommunication. We react with hurt & fear instead of explaining ourselves again, or listening to another's perspective.

And at the end of the day, all that each of us is really trying to communicate is, "do you love me?", "am I enough?", "do you want me?".... at the end of the day, we are all looking for the people (& deity) with whom we can go back to the garden, where we can be naked & without shame. stripped of all the defenses that we put up to protect our fragile view of ourselves.... At the end of the day, we want to be heard, to be understood, to have someone that will listen & hear the heart behind the words.....

....and again, this brings me back to the dancing... the true communication is not an instantaneous thing, not even with soul-mates, as rare & as wonderful a thing as that may be (& some days believeing in the concept of soul-mates feels like believing in unicorns (which I kind of do))... For all of us, communication is learned, we have to stop to listen, to speak, to slowly build our own 'language' with each other - to not take for granted that we understand, but instead, to painstakingly create our own rosetta stone, our translation key, for those we love so that we can slowly learn to interpret what each other is really trying to communicate.....

...the tower of Babel ultimately is torn down by love, brick by brick.... It's the confusion that stops us building - the heartache of longing for relationship that helps us realize that we are made for intimacy.... but it's love that helps us tear down the place of confusion, the walls that have separated us from God & from those we want to love... it's love that helps us learn when to move, to sway, to spin, to twirl.... it's love that helps us learn the steps of the great Dance, the romance of life.... but it is very much a slow, humble process, coupled with a lot of silence, a lot of listening & a lot of learning to communicate with & without words....

Dawning Realizations/Lost baggage

I forgot to mention in yesterday's post, in the middle of the hurt/frustration of breaking the tagine, of how I got on to the thoughts of death. It came, oddly enough from an episode of 'batman beyond'... a cartoon. In the middle of an episode, the new batman has the choice to either turn himself over to the villain, or let the villain attack the city. He has the choice between sacrificing himself or to stay safe & let the city die. Being the heroic type, he sees only the option of sacrifice, thinking it's just him vs. the baddie. But in this moment a friend reminds him of the hole he'd leave if he were gone in the lives of his mom, brother, friends.

I paused the show there, to go grab another glass of milk (was eating at the time) & somewhere between the pause button & the fridge, the tears struck. The unexpected voice started to whisper, to remind me of the hole I'd leave in peoples lives if I wasn't around...

Tonight I got the privilege of being able to share "my story" with the people at the community house/urban monastery. With the lingering frustration from the fractured pot, the telling of the tale took on a slightly different tone than what I wanted.

Each time I tell my story, it seems that different themes come out in the overall picture. Tonight's theme seemed to parallel that of the 'batman revelation'... For a lot of my life I've treated myself like I was alone, alienated. This has come from a variety of places, but mostly lies i belived about who i was... thoughts that I am unlovable, unwanted, etc. So I've lived a lifetime of either bartering for friendship or living in this place of expecting to be left alone at the end of the day....

But the reality, if I see it right/correctly now, is that I have always been loved.... This is still a dawning realization, but yeah, I'm starting to see this reality....

My friends prayed for me tonight. It's been a long time since I've had/let people pray for me... It was good. very good. Once again, like rain washing over my soul.... I want to hang on to their prayers, to remember the exact words they said, but yeah, the memories fade & we can't hang on to the moments, just let them find root in our hearts to grow from simple seeds into rich fruit....

They spoke over me words of adoption, of a consistency of indentity, of an identity that was not destroyed/taken away, but was always there. They spoke of kingship, of being a patriarch, of joseph, of fulfilled dreams/longings, of jacob wrestling the angel... & most of all that they were there for me.... and all of it kind of broke me open again, the plow turning up new ground to receive the seed... it's been a long time of fighting alone - or at least living in the illusion that I'm alone....

I think I've seen someone's illustration of the entrance to heaven of being this picture of where the entrance to heaven is on the left, on the right is this sea of fire. As people approach the gates, they get to leave behind all the luggage, all the baggage that they've been carrying around their whole lives. & it's this baggage that fills the sea of fire, burning up all the heartaches that people carried for years....

... it's starting to feel like i can leave the bag called 'isolation' on the side of my road, that it's a burden I won't have to carry any more. I'm not saying this in some sense that this group of people is going to 'rescue' me from isolation - I'll drive them bonkers if I look to them to save me. It's just again, that the light is shining in a dark place. The light of truth illuminates the reality of my situation & there is just the realization again that I am loved....

Small Defeats: Ringing Ears/Broken Pots

Today's been an odd, odd day. Good day I think, just an odd day for the internals & leaves me unsure what to think.

My ears have been ringing most of the day. Now at 10 o'clock at night they're only ringing a little. This meant spending the day is sort of a fog where I was hearing things fine, but felt like I was walking around in a bucket & missing somehow part of the sounds around me. It also seemed to affect equilibrium & I was just tired & dragging myself around....

I spent a lot of time worrying about the ears. I'm a bit of a hypochondriac at the best of times, so I worry about anything that goes wrong physically. I'd watched "Children of Men" on Friday with a friend & there's a bomb blast in the movie & then this ringing in the sound-system that echoes the ringing in the guy's ears. His wife tells him that the ringing is the sound of a bunch of hearing cells dying, never to be restored... & so this thought has stuck with me a lot today.

I've spent chunks of time thinking about what it would be like to lose hearing, about all the sounds that I missed. Got me thinking about the sounds of the voices of friends, laughter, all the music that is out there, stuff that I've heard & love, stuff that is yet to be written, both by friends & strangers... it'll be hard to catch the full effect of Renaissance II if I can't hear any of it.... I'd miss hearing my niece & nephew, hearing my future wife (if such a one exists) say 'I do' & every other sound she might make... I'd miss hearing my own kids voices, reading stories to them....

... this got me thinking about death in general. Fear's of a bum-ticker & a limited warranty/life-span on my 'chassis'. I had some weird experience driving yesterday where traffic slowed & I hit the brakes & nothing happened. It was some sheet of ice & i skidded for quite a ways, feeling very out of control, but oddly calm, before coming to a stop. It was some slow motion strangeness where I really don't know what happened. Somehow nothing happened, but it sort of freaked me out. I didn't expect to die, but it made me realize again how easily it could happen & all the stuff I want to do before I go would be left undone...

I've been thinking about what it would mean to lose the ability to hear one frequency, one note... how would that impact my ability to soak in the full texture of music. My hearing isn't that good at the best of times & I never buy a high enough sound system to truly hear the full effects of music (digital or otherwise), so I'm probably missing a lot every day.... but I was wondering how much it would change things to even miss the tiniest bit of sound....

I broke my tan\gine tonight. A very good friend bought me a tagine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagine) for Christmas to cook Moroccan food in. They cook 'tagines' (stews) in this dish, the dish apparently rests on a fire & they conical top keeps the heat & flavours in & they slow roast the food in there. I did some reading on the internet & they said tagines were to be used on a stovetop, maybe not in an oven (though maybe wikipedia says different). Anyhow, I started it on the stovetop, heating the meat in it. Then I needed to add some liquid & (from past bad experiences) knew the water couldn't be cold, so I made sure it was hot-ish, but obviously not enough. I poured the water in & nearly immediately heard this big 'crack crack crack' & the dish cracked badly in three places, leaking all the water out, destroying the dish.....

... I was so mad at myself. Copious amounts of swearing followed, And I hit the hood over top of my stove in anger. Then after realizing I'd put a big dent in the hood with my childish fits of rage, I was even more mad at myself & swore some more, but decided not to hit anything else....

... So got all choked on the rage & sadness for a while. I've broken dishes like this before & thought I'd do better this time. I thought I'd researched it, but not enough... I felt bad for wrecking a gift from a good friend & destroying something that has sentimental value. I was overwhemed with disappointment at this & blamed myself. I was angry/upset because I was angry & upset. Mad at myself that I wasn't handling this better & yeah....

...one big mess....

...salvaged a meal out of it. Had a very good time chatting with my friend. The evening was in general a happy one once I got (sort of) over my fit... My friend left around 10 & now I've been sitting here in the now peaceful house & sort of reflecting on the day that was. I feel drained... anger takes a lot out of me & I sort of don't like that side of me. There's a reality of where anger is soooo needed in our lives. There are times where we as humans need to fight for stuff, mostly to fight for people & it's a necessary emotion of being human. But I'm just not so sure I like how my anger is expressed - it's the fast flare of rage that leaves me lashing out stupidly for a bit & then I calm down, or I just internalize it, turn the anger inward instead of outward. Maybe the slow burn anger is better ( & maybe a slower burn would've helped my tagine survive)... but I don't know...

...I worry somewhat about the anger thing with relationships. I haven't had a really good row with anyone lately. Some flare ups with the roomies, but they've been minimal. Mostly I smoulder around them if I'm angry. If I get married, I'll 'want' to fight with my wife. Not that it's something I'll look for, but I'll want to be able to have each of us confront each other's pride. I'll want her to put me in my place when I need to be. I'll want to be able to assert myself. To say what I really think or feel, even if it makes her upset. I don't want to be a guy that just bends to her will. I did that with the first girlfriend - losing myself for the sake of 'maintaining the relationship' - though really I didn't lose myself. I just held back 'me' for the times when we weren't hanging out. & I fear that I do that now every so often.... I'm much better with it, but it happens once in a while & I don't like it. A good relationship should allow for total honesty. Disagreements & conflict are part of life & are so necessary to building healthy relationships &, especially, a healthy marriage. I want to show my wife 'me' completely. & I want to see her compeletely. We can then work out the parts where we clash with each other through communciation....

..but yeah, I wonder about that & 'hypochondriac' with that, too. I feel afraid some moments that I will suck at that, but I guess if I look at my more recent friendships, I've gotten used to going through conflict with friends. I just sort of feel like I'm 'no good' because the conflicts usually don't get brought up & resolved in the moment. Usually it's blow up, talk about it, make things worse, but sort of hear each other, then later sort of figure out what it all really meant after tempers have cooled & calmer hearts have taken over....

... but yeah, it's harder. When the fire of rage blazes for that one moment of total rage, how do you control is so it doesn't spill onto those you love? & how do you let the anger out so you don't withdraw from those you love & hide yourself?.... guess it gets worked out in the moments of relationship... maybe I react differently when there's no one in the house to hear my cursing & only inanimate objects around to take my abuse....

... but yeah, it's this kind of stuff that makes me feel all ugly inside.

I'm suppossed to share my 'life story' with the urban monastery/community house folks tomorrow night. I was happy about this. Right now I'm sort of thinking about crawling under a rock & hiding. Guess anger is part of my story... & hence gets to be told...

but yeah, a very emptying day following a good day of rich conversations & 'small victories'...

Small Victories

Well, maybe the dance lessons are paying off. Went dancing with some friends tonight & didn't feel awkward & out of place (or, well, at least not as awkward & out of place as I normally would). It wasn't partner dancing, so the lessons weren't really fully being utilized, but I felt more free in the ability to move, to recognize that I could (most times) feel the beat & move my body to that. I didn't have a mirror to really see what I looked like, so that maybe helped. I could imagine that I didn't look too bad wiggling around.... if I had the mirror there, maybe I'd do the usual, "whoa, who's that big guy trying to look all smooth & graceful"....

...but yeah, I had fun. Normally any 'dance' experience intimidates the crap out of me & I'm petrified & frozen by my fears of inadequecy. Tonight the fears weren't so bad. Part of it was being with friends I trust, part of it was that it wasn't partner dancing so I was just looking after me instead of trying to lead someone, too. Part of it was that I'm learning to 'pretend'.... I'm learning to bypass some of my fears by pretending that I'm someone who isn't affected by those fears. It's maybe really messed up that you have to play head games with yourself to get around some of these things, but yeah, I figure whatever it takes to beat the fears at their own game is fine by me.....

....my eardrums are not so happy with me though....

...but the rest of me feels like tonight was a little tiny personal victory. (That & it was just cool to be able to watch the beauty, grace & freedom through which my friends moved (though they could've been pretending just like me... if so, they did a really good job of pretending)....

On another random note. Had a great conversation with a close friend today. Somewhere in the middle of it there was a few tears shed that I tried to wipe away quickly. The tears came 'cause there was something there in what my friend was talking about that made me think that maybe we're going to get a chance for that second renaissance after all.... I forget what it was, but it was something they said combined with the newfound hope I've been dwelling in lately that made me think that we are going to get that one last chance to blaze before the coming night.... or maybe it's the other way round, to steal one of Bruce Cockburn's phrases, we get to "kick at the darkness til it bleeds daylight".....

.... again, it's looking to be a great year....

I worry about me somedays

I worry about me some days.

I've been raving lately on the blog about great & marvelous things, All wildly waving my hands & words around trying to wrap text around emotions & thoughts that seem to want to split me open with their beauty, greatness & grandness.... There have been days lately where I've felt like I'm on drugs or something... life seems so big & breathtaking & full of awe & wonder & it feels so good to just breathe.....

...and then other moments are just $@%^. I've had a week of work looking after someone else's project & have spent pretty much the entire week feeling stupid. That's mostly just being hard on myself, but after a week of answering questions with, "I don't know the answer to that. Give me a hour, a day, a few days & I'll try to find the answer for you", it sort of wears you down. I've found the answer to most of the questions & have used my judgement & have solved the problems (most of them anyhow), but you still feel sort of foolish when you're saying, "Yes, I'm in charge of this, but I'm just learning, give me a bit...."

So today I was grumpy, tired, worn, lonely & just tired of feeling dumb. I wandered around work trying not to randomly growl at people & was just thinking about the contrast between these moments, this place of unhappiness, & the stuff I've been raving about on the blog. It made me wonder if I'm full of it, if the stuff I write is just crap that I want to believe. Maybe I'm just lying to myself that I'm happy, maybe I'm really not? Maybe I'm losing my mind & the up & down is a sign of a chemical imbalance. Maybe there's something really wrong with me & the up & down of emotions is a 'defective part' somewhere... Maybe if there's nothing wrong, I'm driving myself into insanity by too much thinking & not enough sleep....

& so I worry about me. I think it's mostly that I've heard other people (family, friends) make comments about me where they are worried about me. A lot of the "maybes" above are things that people have spoken to me or hinted at. & yeah, I'm not quite confident enough in myself to be able to fully write some of this stuff off...

...but yeah, deep down, I've chosen to live life with open sails, to some moments take my hand off the wheel & let the wind guide.... some days it's the spirit, other days it feels like crosswinds trying to crash you on the reefs.... but at the root of it all, I want my life to be real, to be lived & somehow the up & down is part of it....

... one thing lately is that I've been really reluctant to go to bed. I've got no good reason for it. I'm avoiding the normal late night traps lately, so that's not keeping me up, but it's something else. At the end of the day, there is always this place where I'm looking for something. Lately it's been these quiet moments where I enjoy the peacefulness & time alone. A number of nights this week (like tonight) inspiration strikes & lots & lots & lots of words roll off the fingers onto the screen.... but yeah, something's sort of missing (maybe) & I'm not sure what.....

Everyday bravery

There are a lot of days where I feel like I really annoy my friends.

I'm weird. I say stuff that I'm not supposed to say. I'm all mushy & gooshy & am sort of like an open sore some days. I left all my feelings seep out & yeah, it's kind of messy & gross. Responsible people seem to save their emotions for more rational times....

... most of the time what freaks people out is the random expressions of "I appreciate you", "you're wonderful", "you're fantastic", "thank you", "thanks for being my friend"... all kinds of stuff like that.

For me it's important that the people around me know they matter to me. I don't want to be in a car wreck & thinking about all the people I need to phone to tell them I love them... I sort of hope they know now & hence try to tell them in the 'now' instead of waiting for that last moment.... (though there never seems to be enough time/space in a lifetime to tell people they're loved.... there always seems to be room for one more time, one more expression).

But it's weird. Part of it is living life like you're dying (which I guess I am, just slowly). Part of it is this random thing from a Billy Crockett CD. On one of Billy's live albums, he intros his song "Thankful Boys & Girls" with a comment about the janitor in his friend's brother's church. Apparently if you ask this janitor guy, who has the not so fun job of cleaning the place, how he's doing, he always replies with, "Grateful"

...this quote has stuck in my heart for years & hence why I sign a lot of my e-mails (including pretty much all the work ones) with "Thanks,"..... it's sort of in recognition that nothing that happens in my life is 'deserved' or 'earned'... all is gift.... and this helps me be aware of how much I am given great gifts, especially by my friends.....

....despite the thoughts of global warming, relationally it's a cold world out there & it is such a rare thing to find anyone who cares even a little, let alone to find the rare & precious gift of a true & lasting friend.....

...but one of the things that freaks my friends out, is that I tell them that I admire their bravery. Tell people you admire them & it freaks them out (it does me). Maybe it makes us feel like we're on a pedestal, some precarious height from which we're sure to fall. Maybe we're all wired for 'Crabbuckit' (this phenomenon where you can leave a bunch of crabs in an open bucket & none of them will escape 'cause as soon as one tries, the others will pull them back down). There seems to be this thing in us, this twisted part of us, that cripples our own success. We never really accept compliments 'cause we figure we don't deserve them or something. We never really believe in ourselves & so when someone else tries to push us up towards the bucket's mouth, we end up pushing ourselves back down going, "I'm nothing special" (& yeah, I'm probably the worst offender with this).....

...so telling someone they're admired is freaky enough. Telling them they're brave get's even worse. The only people who get to be 'brave' in our society are like firefighters & police officers, people who "run in when others run out"... the rest of us, we just live day to day, we get by. This is not bravery......

There's another Billy Crockett tune (among many) that I love that is just a weird little song:

Mark and Sammy—Billy Crockett and Milton Brasher-Cunningham

Chorus: Mark and Sammy and Sammy and Mark
Knocking ‘em out of the old ball park
Mark and Sammy and Sammy and Mark
I need another one from you.

New year’s day was warm this year
How beautiful did our future then appear
How quickly it turns, how fragile our soul
And here’s the look, the pitch, the swing
And now it’s gone, gone, gone. Chorus.

Someone had a childhood dream,
They’ll tell you ‘bout
How it slips away unseen
The long I live the less that I know
But I love the sound in that stadium
When you are bound for home. Chorus.

What makes the great ones anyway
You find your one thing and get up and do it again today
I swear they aren’t giving that stuff away.
So I find my guitar
And I walk to the light
And I vow to try again
To be the man I’m made to be tonight

Mark and Sammy and Sammy and Mark
Knocking ‘em out of the old ball park
Mark and Sammy and Sammy and Mark
I’m playing this one for you.

It was written in the one summer where these two guys, Mark & Sammy (& I forget their names 'cause I'm not a sports guy), were battling it out for the home run record. First one guy would break the record, then the other guy would break his record & then the first guy would break the record again... and, if you're into baseball, it was this exciting time of watching two people excel.

I love this song 'cause it paints a picture for me of this idea of 'every day bravery'.... It's not like these two ball players were anything 'epic'. It's doubtful that they had qualities that made them larger than life. Their claim to fame was that they were good at hitting home runs, and so each day, each new game, was another chance to face their gifts & talents, to face the expectations others placed on them, to face whatever fears & baggage they had, to pick up the bat one more time & try to swing for the stands.....

What made these guys 'great', what made their story take on 'epic' proportions (or at least earned them a song from Billy) was not these great super-heroic things, it was just the ever day faithfulness of taking what they were good at & choosing to do that, over & over again....

I love the imagery of Billy taking his gift, picking up a guitar, walking into the blinding stagelights to look at an audience he can't see, to put fingers to guitar & hope that the magic hits, to hope that the night is one more moment when the word becomes flesh & where he connects with some greater creative force & this force/voice speaks through him something that will connect with his audience in some way more than just a 'cool' show.... (not that there's anything wrong with 'just' a cool show, but it's that connection that (I think) artists crave).....

... but this is the same every day bravery I see in my friends. Being a listener, I'm lucky enough to be entrusted with knowing (in a lot of cases) where my friend's hurt. I know with them the risks they take in sometimes the simplest of decisions. I know often just how many fears they face/confront, to try to embrace the gift of who they are for one more moment & to reach past all the crap that others have told them to try, one more time, to reach for something more than just the status quo.

This is one of the many things that helps make me so enamored with my friends. They are people rich in heart & very gutsy people... I hope to learn from them & keep finding my own every day bravery....

Building Better Dreams, Pt. 1 (of many)

Just back from watching the movie "Children of Men" with my friend, Pam. Odd, odd movie. Good, extremely interesting. Extremely bleak (though quite possible) look at the future, but yeah, parts of it I was left going, "huh, I don't get it, what are you trying to say" (guess it's maybe like Radiohead. Hopefully I'll get it someday soon).

But the movie makes you think, or at least it made Pam & I think. (Pam has Psalms 90: 12 running through her head, "So teach [us] to number our days, that we may apply [our] hearts unto wisdom."). One of the questions I had (maybe not the most intelligent or insightful question, but yeah), was just wondering where we would be in the middle of that future. By 'we', I kind of meant the urban monastery community that Pam is a part of & that I am, well, yes, I guess I can say I'm a part of now, too. (I'm slow with using the 'we' term & lumping myself in with everyone, not 'cause I don't want to be (though there's likely fears there), but mostly 'cause it's 'sacred space' for me - to have gone through the months & years to forge this community of people is no small feat & everyone in the community house (including the 9th member who doesn't live in the house) has poured in a ton of sweat, tears, laughter, frustration & heartache to get to where they are.... me, I'm just a newbie, I haven't paid the cost that these brave (in an everyday bravery kind of sense) folks have paid.... I feel like I have to 'earn' the 'we', though as grace & love will have it, they'll likely consider me a 'we' without my earning it....)

OK, that was a rabbit trail - gotta love stream of consciousness writing style, eh?

Anyhow, where was I, oh yes: With the 'we' I was referring to the urban monastery community, but that can extend to everyone in my circle of friends/family. If society goes in the crapper, where will we be? Alone, foraging for food somewhere, just trying to stay alive? Will we be dead in some ditch somewhere? Will we be handing out food to people? Will we be showing love? Will we be, in the darkest places, messengers of hope or join the destruction?

and yeah, with these thoughts running through my head, I sat down at the computer & a quote from the movie "Reign of Fire". Lovely B-movie with a likewise apocalyptic view of the future where the world is taken over by dragons. At the time I thought it was a great illustration of how pastors/shepherds get turned into apostles (through realizing the only way to keep 'your people' safe is to take the fight to the enemy), but I'm not sure if I know what those words mean anymore. Well, pastor I know, I live that one. Apostle is all confused for me....

At the end of the movie, after the dragons are (maybe) defeated, the leader guy is thinking about the future & whether or not the dragons will come back to further destroy humanity. His response to this: "if they come, they'll burn, we'll build...." (which apparently is also a Nationalist/fascist slogan, which sort of ruins whatever I'm trying to say here).....

...but this all got me to thinking about the great gift of hope that has come recently. See there's something great about being human. There's this gift that all of us has been given, a gift that is blessing & curse. It frees us & drives us mad (insane). It's the flame of hope that lives inside each of us, a candle flame that is somehow, miraculously hard to extinquish (or at least hard to completely snuff out for good). This is source of the every day bravery, the dogged determination that maybe tomorrow will be a better day, that there is still a chance, still a possibility of something good happening......

.... this brought me back to my life in early/mid December & one of the two 'revelatory' moments that made me think about joining up with the urban monastery community. I was doing what I often do, sitting there moping & whining about past dreams & how they've apparently gone to rubble & rubbish & in the middle of my good winge, the unexpected voice in my head says, "well then, I guess you'll just have to build better dreams".....

...and it stopped me. There's this great passage in Haggai 2 which is quoted in Hebrews 12. In Haggai, it's God speaking to encourage a small remnant of people trying to rebuild God's temple in Jerusalem. They've started to build & the young generation sees this great hope of having worship restored to the nation of Israel. The old men weep & cry 'cause it looks so pitiful & not like the great stuff that they one had in Solomon's temple (see Ezra 4). God's response to all of this? He tells them,

"For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it [is] a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry [land]; And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts. The silver [is] mine, and the gold [is] mine, saith the LORD of hosts. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts."

Basically God tells them that He will turn the world upside down & the 'glory' of this pitiful little temple will be greater than the glory of Solomon's temple. How? Well, in Solomon's temple, the old place of worship, (see 2 Chronicles 5), the glory of God comes in this thick cloud that fills the temple so that no one could stand in it. Eventually the glory of God hid behind the veil of the temple so that people could go in & out of the temple without being overwhelmed by God's presence.

The new, pitiful, temple built by Zerubbabel & Joshua & their people, eventually, over generations is refurbished by king Herod. Total scumbag kind of guy, but he tried to polish the place up to get brownie points with the Jewish leaders. At the heart though, it's still the little pitiful temple.... and into this place walks Jesus, the glory of God wrapped in human flesh. This is the greater glory, the revelation of Christ.....

...anyhow (maybe this is rabbit trailing, but it's build-up for the punchline). This passage gets quoted in Hebrews 12 where it also adds the following elaboration:

"Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this [word], Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God [is] a consuming fire."

I love this passage & the idea that there is wheat & chaff in each of our lives. Some stuff is good, solid nourishing. Some things are unshakeable &, no matter what happens, cannot be moved. There is other stuff that is dust, excess baggage, a waste of time. This stuff blows away with the slightest wind... There is this reality that we can't try to hang on to 'that which can be shaken', it's not reality, it will fade & die. We can only hang on to the kingdom which cannot be shaken.... & what is this? Well, I don't know.... that's part of the shaking process. You find out what can't be shaken after the personal earthquakes come & turn everything else to rubble. You sort of don't know for sure what 'can't be shaken' until after it's all one big tossed salad....

But, I have a hunch that the stuff that can't be shaken have something to do with faith, hope & love, the things which somehow remain....

& this is the part about building better dreams. The dreams I had were built around a building, one idea, one concept. As the dreams crumbled, I started to realize that the heart stuff (for me the love for people) is one of those 'unshakable' things in my life & that I'd do that with or without the dreams. So mostly I've just eked out an existence without dreams for the past year or two. Now, the dreams are maybe starting to come back again. The flame of hope, though hidden, now beings to burn again in earnest.

There are dreams waiting to be dreamed. Big & little ones, all important. At the end of the day, we'll find somewhere that the greatest dreams will be those that are unshakable, like the unquenchable fires of hope & love.... (or maybe it's part of the dream to believe that faith, hope & love can never be extinquished until the day we see our dreams made reality & all that is left is love)....

... but yeah, I'm feeling it's time to rebuild... time for more dreams... for the every day bravery to try again...

Speaking of Dar

I really like this song from Dar. You can hear her thoughts on it at: http://www.darwilliams.com/media.html

Teen for God by Dar Williams

The sun burns down

Leaving God's bright stamp

On Peach Branch Horse and Bible Camp

Where we're splashing in the water

Joined in song

Swimming with the Spirit the whole day long

I'm a teen for God

God is watching - teen for God

God is watching - teen for God

The girls have looks and the girls have rules

They came here from their Bible schools

They can make you pay attention

To the way you dress and eat

Make you trip over your own two feet and they

Kneel down on their towels at night

Their nightgowns glow with a Holy light

And we pray for the sinners

And their drunken car wrecks

And vow that I'll never get high

And have sex

I'm a teen for God

God is watching - teen for God

God is watching - teen for God

And God made every leaf on every tree

Each grain of sand

God has a plan

For what we're meant to be

I gotta wait for God

Dear Lord

I plan each day

The things I will not do or say

But I'm driven by a passion

Is it only there to tame?

It fills my heart and it calls my name and

This world that you made for us

I know, I know, is dangerous

So I ride a lot of horses

And I never even swear

Sorta like praying I'm just not there

Oh God

God is watching - oh God

God is watching

But God made love

God made the rivers run

And cowboy boots and bathing suits

And the boy's skin dries in the sun...

You gotta help me, God

Help me know, four years from now

I won't believe in you anyhow

And I'll mope around the campus

And I'll feel betrayed

All those guilty summers I stayed

But then I'll laugh

That I fell for the lure

Of the pain of desire to feel so pure

And I'll bear all the burdens

Of my little daily crimes

Wish I had a God for such cynical times

Far from today

But for now I'm a sacred vessel

Rip me open - I spread your word

Like a milkweed pod

I'm a radio station -

Your Holy transmission

Even more, like a lightning rod

I'm a lightning rod - a teen for God

God is watching - teen for God

God is watching... a teen for God

This song 'resonates' with my memories of growing up in the church. It captures the tension between being caught between religion & relationship, the tug of war between the divine, what you've been told by others & who you think you are - which you're desperately trying to find out at that age ...& sort of never stop searching.

I love the imagery in it, that the reality of who we are, of the wild, crazy part of what makes us human is stronger than the stuff we're told by others. I love the imagery in it of the 'dangerous' part of opening oneself to the divine - that it's never like you've been told, it's far better & far worse. Far more likely to tear you open & leave you like a seed that dies in the ground in order for new growth to come.

Notes on notes

Well, I think I'm finally starting to get it.....

Get what you ask? Life? Relationships? Spirituality? some deep understanding of people, the world, the universe or myself.... NO!! of course not ... all that stuff is still mysteries to me. I'm talking about Radiohead. Been listening to "OK Computer" a number of times this week & I'm reaching a point where I'm connecting with the music & really enjoying it & feeling the multiple textures to the music.

This is perhaps not a great thing to 'get', but at least it keeps me in the club (i.e. the music loving people won't kick me out so far).

Not that I really 'get' it in the sense of understanding it (least of all 'Fitter Happier'), but at least I can say I'm enjoying it & now when people talk about 'Paranoid Android', I can say, "Yeah, what a great tune!" instead of looking on with blank stare......

... I'm realizing music listening has changed for me. My first album (a tape, yes, yes, I'm old) was back in, oh, '92 or something. My first album was Rich Mullin's "The World as Best As I Remember it, Vol 2." (well, that & a Twila Paris tape, but I try to not admit to that). I listened to that tape over & over & yeah.... back in those days & for the longest time, I was a lyrics guy. I listened to music for what the message of the words were. I was looking for something with substance, something that said something, meant something.

Over the course of the years, my tastes have evolved. I moved from more blunt lyrics (songs that said one thing & no matter how many times you listened to them still said, well, just the same thing as what they said the first time) to more & more poetic or vague lyrics. Some of this was from listening to Rich & the songs he sang that spoke in images & pictures as much as they did in trying to just say something specific.

But still it was a lot about the lyrics. I had time then to read liner notes & go through every word & contemplate it, study them. I never could understand how people could listen to a song & not know the words. What was the point I figured if you can't understand the words, why bother, you've missed the whole message of the song......

Well, times have changed. I don't usually have time to read liner notes. Part of it is life, part of it is the volume of CD's I'll pick up, some is that it doesn't matter as much anymore. Listening now is more of a whole body experience than just an ear/head thing. Music is this rich media of communication. Certainly most of sound is felt by our ears, but our bodies, too, feel the vibrations of the music and respond. Music, beat, rythm, they have a way of invoking movement into us. The songs we hear tease us, tempt us.... they call us away from stillness & from complacency & lure us, woo us, into movement, into expression, into joy & laughter... the wild freedom of hearts & bodies & souls unchained....

There is something profound about just notes. I'm sure there is some great science behind it all & people much wiser than me will have to plumb those depths, but it amazes me how a single note, one tone can evoke an emotional response....... as mentioned in a few posts before, I love 'wandering piano' - for me notes & chords now speak so much to me, or maybe it is in the stillness of just hearing a melody that my soul is open to hear from somewhere beyond me.... I find it amazing that I can be emotionally moved by just a melody - this confounds the part of me that thought the only value was in the lyrics - not to say that lyrics aren't valuable & very much part of the storytelling of song - but I find it amazing that so much can be said in a song, with no word ever being spoken. Listen to violin, or cello, or other stringed instruments & there is this mournful, beautiful, haunting quality to the music.

It would be neat to know the science behind it all. In engineering there is this world of crystals, things that naturally vibrate in the world. We use them at work to make 'clocks' - little tiny crystals keep resonating at a certain frequency, keeping perfect time which drives every action, every one and zero that flows through the digital technology of today. Other things have 'resonant frequencies' - where if you put vibrate something at the right frequency near the object, the object, once still, will start to vibrate at the same frequency. Sometimes this has good effects, sometimes disastrous. I've seen pictures of bridges where a windstorm caused the bridge to hit it's resonant frequency & the bridge literally tears itself apart from the vibrations.

I wonder if as humans, as beings of flesh have our 'vibrations', our 'resonance'... What is it about a melody that will leave one person stiff, still & unbending, or cause them to cross their arms & will reduce another person to tears... What is it about some melodies that bring so much joy, others so much sadness.

How does a song come together? How do melodies find their way from the beyond, to the creator/creative, to the page or piano or strings.... these are mysteries to me...

but yeah, all that to say that I now try to 'feel' music as much as I do listen to the words. The marriage of lyrics to melody is an amazing, mysterious thing, too - not unlike the marriage between two people - but yeah, I'll leave that rant for another day.

On that note (hee hee, bad pun), other music I've been enjoying lately (other than what's been mentioned in previous posts):

- Joni Mitchell's "Dreamland" - gorgeous, gorgeous album. I sort of have to save it for special occasions when I can savour it

- Pretty Girls Make Graves "The New Romance": Recommended by Andy Wilson. Fantastic alternative album, with some great layering of tones, notes & chords/dischords...

- 'Stranger than Fiction' soundtrack: excellent album & again, lots of great 'texture' to the music

- Niyaz's self titled album: mixture of Persian & Indian sounds with electronica. Beautiful album, fun, great background music

- Ruthie Foster's "Runaway Soul": I'm not sure how to describe it. Blues. Spiritual. It's deeply spiritual in the sense that these are songs that touch the reality of spiritualty, they feel like old songs (& some are) & there feels like a progression in the album from slavery to freedom (& finds freedom all the way along)

- Dubblestandart's "Are you Experienced": Dub music. Imagine reggae where they treat the base player like the lead instrument.

- City & Colour's "Sometimes": My roomie Dan introduced this one to me (& Regina Spektor). Gorgeous voice & sounds. I'm usually melancholy by album's end, but, hey, that's sort of a default state for me

- Little Axe's "Champagne & Grits": Again, great layering of sound, surprisingly spiritual with some great lyrics in it. Love the "Go Away Devil" song which quotes out of Psalms 1:1

- Dar Williams & Eliza Gilkyson: while not maybe the most musically experimental (i.e. it's folk music with guitars & pianos & stuff, folk usually doesn't try to do what 'Pretty Girls Make Graves' would try to do). Lyrically (& musically) they paint beautiful pictures from people who have lived life & have watched much & felt much.... Dar's "February" reduces me to a wreck nearly every time I hear it & helps remind me just how hard it is to keep the 'winter' from our relationships & those we most love (I hope the woman I love never will be able to forget what a flower is).

- Neko Case: a voice that is simply, wow. So much power in one person's voice. Her voice has so much texture & richness to it...

-K'Naan's "The Dusty Foot Philospher": for all those of you who hate rap, this is a great album - he has something to say in this one & it's worth the listen. (my brother Preston introduce me to this guy).

- Kathleen Edwards' "Failer": I know I hyped this one before, but great album....& Canadian, too :)

- "Setting Sun": it's, uhm, an album you can't find in stores, but I was lucky enough to be given a copy. I'm maybe biased towards it, but love the album. Vocals, lyrics, the whole flow of the album (when the songs are in the right order) is breathtaking. Rich textures to the album & a real celebration of life & the stuff we gain & lose when those we love go away.

Mixed emotions

Spent the evening last night over at the urban monastery community house. First night of joining the group in some 'official' level. When I got there, I was in a sugar overload, a raging headache & I was feeling somewhere between wanting to pass out or hurl, so I was kind of quiet for a lot of the early evening. Mostly got to sit there & eat & observe & listen....

...and honestly, there were a number of moments where I just about burst into tears. I felt overwhelmed again (see a few posts below), my soul awash with the wonder of being around these people - simple, normal, magnificent people. Part of it was just the sweetness of observing rich lives, seeing individuals who I admire, respect, trust, people who I have been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the wonder of who they are deep down.... Part of the sense of being overwhelmed came from entering the cathedral of friendship, the sanctuary of community.... the temple of family.... I realized in hanging out with these people that it's been a long time.... I've shared the richness of great one-on-one times with those few that I've held close to me in that 'inner circle', but it's been a long time since I've felt like part of a group, part of something 'bigger'... and so the night felt like water pouring over the parched earth of my soul.... (& it surprised me just how parched I felt).....

the whole thing felt kind of healing. At the end of the evening, I took the buckets of ice cream & strawberries down to their freezer in their furnace room. It was dark & I couldn't find a light switch so I fumbled around in the darkness. Usually these are the places where the fears start whispering all kinds of crazy stuff into my head & I get myself worked into a panicked frenzy assuming somethings going to reach out & grab me.... but yeah, even that wasn't so bad. The voices of the fears weren't so loud, didn't seem so real....and there was the promise of friends just a call away if the fears were real....

Driving home, it felt like I became another of those 'statistics of hope' like I mentioned in the "Overwhelmed by Hope" post. It felt like this was a moment of where somethings changed in my life, it felt like a 'dawning'.....

... today the emotions haven't been as happy.... I awoke with no song playing on my internal soundtrack... I woke up after too many snooze alarms, running late, awaking from some odd dream of wandering through this outdoor shopping area somewhere (maybe Ft.Wayne?) & had two buns & one of my sharp knives from home & I was looking for a Christian book store where they gave out free chocolate chip cookies & I was going to use the knife to cut the buns & shove the cookies in & make a cookie sandwich (?!). Then I see, far off, a close friend who I'm suppossed to be meeting with. They're talking on a cell phone & I debate about getting the cookies or just going over to see my friend. So I decide getting to the friend is more important to me, but I am hungry & sort of debate that maybe I should grab the cookies while they're on the phone. But I go to the friend & we walk off bags in hand to continue shopping. They keep talking on the cell phone & are having this wonderful chat with another friend that I don't know & my friend is laughing & having a great time & I walk with them, trying to pretend to have a good time (am sort of having a good time being around them, but I feel awkward hearing the 1 sided conversation & feel gyped & jealous that my time with the friend is being eaten up by their call with someone else, while feeling guilty that I'm being a poop-head about it & all the while thinking that I should've stopped for the cookies)... and I sort of start trying to twirl the knife that's in the hand that my friend can't see (they're on my right, knife is in my left hand) - and the knife thing is sort of an outward sign of the building frustration at the situation, but I'm trying to hide it from my friend, so I don't look like a homicidal freak....

Anyhow, work was busy & chaotic, chasing information on projects I don't understand, trying to look after someone else's work while they're away & not sure if there is mistakes in what they told me or if I'm just not understanding things.....

During the day tryed to make up for the lack of internal soundtrack by listening to the external. City & Colour's "Sometimes" started the day & continued to fuel the melancholy. Loreena McKennitt's "An Ancient Muse" took me through the lunch hour with minimal impact to my mood one way or the other. It 'fit', but didn't influence. Then it was Radiohead's "OK, Computer", which, I just didn't get. A friend once loaned me a Radiohead CD that I loved, but it's been the only one & I thought it was this CD, but maybe it's "Kid A" or "the Bends" (the one where the dude on the cover looks like he's in pain)... I feel like a wannabe when I listen to radiohead. All the truly artistic, musical people seem to 'get' Radiohead & I seem to just not understand it.... this makes me feel out of the club of artsy people & I'd like to be an artist (or at least part of the club).... maybe I'll try again listening to the album while I clean my room tonight.....

I ended my day, feeling frustrated, useless, negligent & clueless, listening to the Wailin' Jennys "Firecracker" (http://www.thewailinjennys.com). Their album & harmonies are so beautiful, but it always sort of wrecks me, leaves me more melancholy than when I started.....

This was the last song playing before i left & I've wept to it several times tonight as it plays across the soundtrack of my heart.....

Apocalypse Lullaby (Annabelle Chvostek)

Hurricanes will come
Earthquakes break the walls
Oceans rise
Empires fall

Enter world, light unshown
Follow heart, follow home
Here we are, light unshown
One round heart, one round home

Spin the speed of light
Tetrahedron blue
One last paradise
You can make for you

Enter world, light unshown
Follow heart, follow home
Here we are, light unshown
One round heart, one round home

Faster than a ship
Further than bomb
See the glowing grid
Send love throughout the throng

Enter world, light unshown
Follow heart, follow home
Here we are, light unshone
One round heart, one round home

I spent the day feeling lonely, though I start to wonder if words like 'loneliness' or 'depression' have any meaning to me anymore. These are the words that I use to describe the moments when my heart feels bare, open, full of longing.... I wonder in these moments of whether or not it is truly loneliness & depression, if I'm the emotional wreck I think I am (or, as a friend pointed out, it could be PMS). Or maybe it's something else entirely....

Maybe it's just that I'm one who 'groans'... someone who feels the travail, the birth pangs of this world.... the coming destruction of all that has robbed us of love & the birthing, dawning of a new day where beauty & love will mark our every moment, where the hills will sing, the trees will clap their hands & rocks & nations cry out in praise. Maybe it's all just catching glimpses of that 'light unshone' - the blinding beauty that hides just under the surface of each person, is seen in autumn leaves, paintings, small children & every blade of grass & shimmer of sky.... the light of love... the new dawn of hope.... the glimmer of a world not yet seen, but hinted at in all of our days & the longings of our hearts.....

Destiny, the new prophets & hello Mr.Cohen

Have started listening to Leonard Cohen over the last few days. Have been cooking stuff, trying to find some good east indian recipes & have been listening to Mr.Cohen while cooking. I've heard his name a lot before, seen the CDs, but have never picked them up. I have always had this bad vibe about Mr.Cohen. I think someone in the church told me he was 'weird' or suspect & since then I've had this imagery of him being some dark & twisted songwriter (which he maybe is in some ways ) I've very much enjoyed his "Hallelujah" as performed by Jeff Buckley (another interesting soul with dark stories & yet incredible expressions of grace & artistry)

But recently, my friend Lisa ( http://ofalltheliars.blogspot.com/) mentioned that she's been listening to some of his songs & so I thought, well, he mustn't be all bad then & so have picked up a couple of albums.

I'm not sure what all to think, but I'm enjoying my 'education'.... I'm surprised by some of the songs that he's written that I just haven't realized are his.

But his lyrics are rich & thought provoking, even if I don't quite catch them:

"And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind."
- From "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen

Have been enjoying "The Tower of Song" among other tunes:

"Well my friends are
gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day
Oh in the Tower of Song

I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get?
Hank Williams hasn't answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
A hundred floors above me
In the Tower of Song

I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond
They tied me to this table right here
In the Tower of Song

So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll
I'm very sorry, baby, doesn't look like me at all
I'm standing by the window where the light is strong
Ah they don't let a woman kill you
Not in the Tower of Song

Now you can say that I've grown bitter but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there's a mighty judgement coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices
In the Tower of Song

I see you standing on the other side
I don't know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We'll never have to lose it again

Now I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back
There moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you sweetly
From a window in the Tower of Song

Yeah my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day
Oh in the Tower of Song"

-- "Tower of Song" by Leonard Cohen

Again, can't say I understand all the nuances of it, but I love the imagery of this singer born with songs to sing, born without a choice & they're destiny is both blessing & curse, prison & freedom.... I think destiny is both comforting & terrifying. We all live for those defining moments, for those rare moments where we know who we are & why we are here on this earth. Other moments this knowledge is like a chain on our feet or a noose around our neck - we can't be anyone else, do anything else except stay with the 27 angels singing songs that come from who knows where.

I very much am convinced that the prophets still live. That Jesus as "The Word", "the Voice", cannot stop speaking to us & He will keep speaking through whatever vessels will carry His message willingly or (sometimes) unwillingly. God speaks through good & bad people. Faithful people & wicked people. God prophesies of Jesus's death & his saving the Jews through Caiphas, the wicked high priest who was only thinking about murdering Jesus. I love how this great prophesy in Numbers 24 (mentioned a few posts back) about the Star & Sceptre coming from Israel was delivered by Balaam the guy whose ass (donkey) talked to him. The thing is with God is that you have to be always listening 'cause you never know what ass he might be chosing to speak through at any given moment.

Artists, being creatives & embracing that part of themselves that is a reflections of God's creative nature, tap into this wellspring. In seeking to create, they end up tapping in some ways to the Source of all creation & you never know what comes out of this connection. But this is why it is so important to listen to the artists around us. God speaks through these people. Sometimes in crystal clear, blinding clarity, other times in hidden whispers of part truths that need to be sifted to find the 'gold'....

But it is so essential to listen. God speaks in every moment, even in the silences (especially in the silences). To a people who will not hear the sermons, who will never darken the door of a church, the good news is still being preached & whispered at & hinted to in some of the most strangest of places.... and I think there is a reality where God anoints artists of our day to speak His heart through canvas & brush, lyric & note, stone & chisel....

Nursing / Weaning

Another metaphor that has come up a number of times recently has been the concepts of nursing & weaning. Odd topics for a guy to be thinking about perhaps, but yeah, you can't always control the themes that show up in your life:

Nursing: I mentioned this in the New Years post, but God introduces himself to Abram/Abraham as "El Shaddai" - the all sufficient, almighty God. "Shaddai" is from the root word for a woman's breast ( 'Shad') metaphorically/in reality God is coming to Abram saying, I will supply everything for you. You can rely on me to be the complete source for everything in your life.

Today at church, the idea was brought up of being childlike & of how we don't really give ourselves over to God fully & needed to work at that. For me the thoughts that came (& I didn't voice them 'cause, well, I didn't) was that we become truly childlike with God when we recognize our complete, utter inability & incapacity to supply our own needs. A little baby only knows need & comfort. When they need (hungry, poopy, afraid, alone) they cry. They yell & wail & keep crying until their needs are met. When these needs are met, they find comfort, they live & thrive in the embrace of their mothers (& fathers). In the early days, their mom's are the baby's whole world. Every source of joy, food, & love is found in her &, in a healthy relationship, the baby relies on the mother with true trust, because they learn through experience, that when they cry, when they need, mom will come to look after them.

With us & God (as with children & parents) the issue comes when we think we know better than our parents what our needs are & how to meet those needs. In a child, as they grow to maturity, there is a reality where a kid has to establish themselves, has to separate themselves from their parents to become their own individual. But this is a phased process & all the while, the kids are mostly reliant on their parents to supply all their needs.

I think we are maybe less childlike with God because we haven't gotten in touch with our true need. When I was unemployed I recognized that there was lots of places where I could wait on God to provide.....or... there was mastercard.... & it's this thing where we don't trust God with our lives & have our 'resources' that we turn to when we figure God hasn't done enough....

To be truly childlike, is to recognize that any resources we have are really gifts from Him anyhow, gifts that can vanish in a heartbeat... and so we do stand in total reliance on Him.

Weaning: As mentioned above, there is a point where kids have to be weaned from nursing. This is a painful process for the kid 'cause it changes the normal set of operations. As mentioned above, the way it works is that the kid cries, mom comes running & looks after the kid. In the weaning process, the kid finds that they will cry & complain & mom hands them a bottle or a cup & says 'help yourself'.... this freaks the kid out 'cause it breaks that dependance on the mom & causes the kid to have to separate from mom & start to become their own individual.

This happens for us spiritually as well. Bob Sorge in his book "Envy: The enemy within" really unpacks this & describes it well (& I'm stealing these thoughts/idea from him). Lots of times, God vanishes in our life, as in Song of Songs chapter 5. We're left as wreck's at that point because, like a small child, we don't understand what's going on or why God's not there, why the closeness of His presence has vanished. These are the places of where God seeks to mature us, to grow us into sons & daughters instead of servants & it's necessary to help mature our love for Him as His bride...

..but it's an encouraging thought in some moments: to realize that you are not abandoned by God, you are being weaned (Psalms 131)

& yeah, this came up in the context of counselling people..... Sometimes you have to wean people off their counsellors, too....

Overwhelmed by Hope

Church was good today.

Maybe it's a sad statement on my point of view when this surprises me, but that attitude "is what it is".... I suppose it wasn't even 'church' in particular that was so good. In a lot of ways I 'abandoned' the true aspects of church in that I chatted with people, but wasn't trying to really connect. Mostly it's that what made church good for me today was a very internal thing & so I feel sort of 'selfish' in the sense that I wasn't really a full participating component of the 'church' as a community today. At the end of the day I was just too overwhelmed to have intelligent conversation that required more than small talk....

Part of it was the worship through song. For months (maybe years) I've been complaining that a lot of the songs in today's modern worship are not songs that I can sing; the words, the lyrics in them, are not the words that are on my heart. It's been hard to find any joy in being able to worship through singing when the songs that are sung are not 'my' songs, not the words that I want to speak to God. I've found it difficult to worship in 'truth' when the words that are sung seem so foreign to my heart's expression....

But today for whatever reason, I found resonance with the songs we sang. The words, songs, melodies, chords, all seemed to fit today - they gave words to the thoughts & feelings of my heart & expressed what I wanted to say. The music moved me, allowed my soul to fit between the notes & chords, echoed longings, spoke mysteries...It is amazing to me how much can be spoken in 'wandering piano' - those moments where someone just plays notes & chords on a piano & there are no words... somehow in this, so much is spoken that resonates with the groanings of your own heart.....

...I'm not sure what made the difference today. It may have had somewhat to do with the person leading - a humble friend, with a true heart full of love & light. I'm finding myself cagey around those who lead singing/worship in church. Some people I trust & some I don't - & I'm not sure why I'm this guarded around people.... it shouldn't be a big deal, but it somehow is. I trust this friend's heart & know that their worship is an expression of the hidden place & so it helps me lower my guard & maybe this opens me up more to finding resonance with the community of worshippers & the songs that are sung.....

...another part of it was just the 'journey' that went on while the music played. One of the earlier songs was mentioning a lot about "the Son" (talking about Jesus) & this somehow triggered me to think about the Son/Sun metaphors in the Bible & triggered me to start looking up verses about Jesus as 'Sun'.

This is where the events of the past day started kicking in & the whispers of things started making sense, coming together. It's one of those odd moments where you realize that random things that you've seen/heard somehow have a connection to them. There are these moments where you have the sense that maybe your life isn't as random as you figure. Maybe there is someone leading, someone directing the drama...

Yesterday I sat down to watch part of the movie "The Saint" with Val Kilmer & Elisabeth Shue. Older movie, but enjoying it. In one scene, Val Kilmer's character is snooping around Emma (Ms. Shue)'s appartment, trying to steal her notes on cold fusion (there's a blast from the past, eh?). On her computer he sees a quotation of Isaiah 9:2, "the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light"). For Emma's character, this means finding some source of limitless free energy that could bring power/energy/light to the whole world.

Later in the day, after driving a friend home, I was listening to a late night talk show interviewing this scientist who is writing all these books about the connection between light & God. He was talking about how that he figures he can prove scientifically that light has some of the primary characteristics of God - omnipresence (everywhere at once), omniscience (all knowing), omnipotence (all powerful) & consciousness. Parts of it sounded great, parts sounded loopy, but parts sounded reasonable....

So these things, these moments, brought me to thinking about the metaphor of God, Jesus, as light, the light, Sun & this led me on this progression through a bunch of verses:

Malachi 4:2 - But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.
Luke 1:76-79 - And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, To give light to them that sit in darkness and [in] the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 2: 29-32, 34&35 - Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. Behold, this [child] is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.
2 Peter 1:19 - We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
Numbers 24:17 - I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.
Isaiah 42: 6&7 - I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, [and] them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.
Isaiah 49:6 - And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.
Isaiah 60:1-3 - Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
Revelation 22:16 - I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, [and] the bright and morning star.

And in all of this, I thought about these ancient words, some as late as 90 AD, some spoken hundreds of years in the past. All of these words though speak to the great primal awareness of darkness & light. For men like Simeon, or Zacharias (John the Baptist's dad) or Isaiah, these are men who lived through great darkness - the destruction & imprisonment of their nation, the moral & social decay of a people. They've lived watching their people descend into chaos & depravity & then finally end up under an oppressive rule where their culture was spit on by the occupying nations.... For them, the message of the light, of a dawn, of a daystar, dayspring - this message meant something....

...recently I commented to a friend that their birthday heralds (actually & metaphorically) the dawn of brighter days & this imagery has stuck with me, both for the friends & for all of us as Christians, as light bearers....

... Thinking about it today, I came into church tired. Had been up later in the evening talking with a new friend who was discussing their time in Sri Lanka & the pending civil war there. On the way into church I caught some radio show interviewing a palestinian man about the problems in Gaza & the west bank. I came into worship today expecting it to be a time of intercession, a place where my heart could reach out through the world & feel the pain, the struggle, the desperation of these far off places & plead with God about it all... This is something I find happens often to me - my heart ends up 'journeying' to other places, following either some real connection between us as humans or just through the imagined connections that come from hearing stories... Anyhow, worship started with this, with a grieving over dying lands, failed states, people's whose lives are torn (thoughts of the movie "Blood Diamond" & the chaos in Africa were in there, too)... & this is where the prayer started - little places where I could feel & share the pain of the world around me....

...but in the middle of reading about the light, reading about Jesus as 'the dawn', I felt, in a deep tangible sense, not just the pain of the world, but the way that the Dawn Bringer comes in each moment. Statistically you can look at the world & say, ah, every 8 minutes a woman is raped. Every 30 seconds someone suffers domestic or sexual abuse. Every few minutes someone will die through violence, or blinking out of existence through starvation & lack of care. Statistically you can say things like this & at times you can feel them - feel the great sum of humanity groaning under the sufferings of this world.... The revelation today for me was the reality that the opposite statistics are true, too. Sitting there, I could feel it: Over here, light has dawned in someone's life. Hope that has been long dead has been rekindled. Over here in this moment, someone makes a choice to leave abuse & head for freedom. In this moment, a nation gets another chance to do the right thing. In this moment a child is born. In this moment someone chooses Jesus, embraces life for the first time....

...and in this 'new' statistics in my life, I found myself suddenly (& still) overwhelmed by hope. It is one of the most beautiful things I've seen with my heart & it left me in tears & breathless (hence the lack of ability to communicate with others - wanted to, but my heart was so empty/full that I just really couldn't).

For me, this is where faith happens. Because I'm made to feel, because I share what others go through, I often embrace the dark sides of life & this sometimes makes me less trusting of God 'cause I know how bad life gets. This makes it hard to trust 'cause I'm always wondering what God is doing in the middle of the suffering.... Today I saw afresh the reality of His presence. I saw the other side of the equation, that the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.... and I sit entranced & overwhelmed by the beauty of this one the Dawn Bringer....

P.S. I think it's going to be a good year....

Reading the Signs

Sometimes in dealing with disappointment with God, you wonder whether anything you think God's ever told you is real or maybe you just made the whole thing up.

Other days you question whether maybe you just were reading the signs all wrong.....

http://www.cantos.ca/

New Year's Resolutions

I never do New Year's resolutions. I figure if it's a good change to make it should be happening all year (though really that's likely a cop out & I just don't make changes that I stick to).

Anyhow, on the drive home I thought that my resolution for this year is to: "try to embrace & welcome change & not be so scared of it"....


....maybe 'try' is going to the operative word here....

...that being said, I still haven't picked which role at work I want to choose.... hoping for revelation in dreams maybe....